Intercultural sensitivity of primary and secondary school students in Belgrade: Gender and age specificities

Abstract

Intercultural sensitivity of students is becoming an increasingly important topic for intercultural education and society. Intercultural sensitivity is defined as an individual's ability to develop a positive emotion towards understanding and appreciating cultural differences in order to promote appropriate and effective behavior in intercultural communication. In order to examine the level of intercultural sensitivity of students, a survey was conducted on a sample of 475 students (64.8% female), aged 13–19 years (M = 15.61; SD = 1.49), who attend primary (26.5% of students) and secondary schools in Belgrade. The instrument Intercultural Sensitivity Scale (ISS) was used to assess intercultural sensitivity. A short explanation was written to the students that there are a large number of cultures in the world that differ from each other in terms of customs, traditions and language, and that all people have the opportunity to interact with people from different culture. Students were asked to evaluate their own opinions and feelings in such situations. ISS is a five-point Likert-type scale, which consists of a total of 24 items, further divided into five subscales: Interaction engagement (e.g. “I enjoy interacting with people from different cultures”), Respect for cultural differences (e.g. “I respect the values of people from different cultures”), Interaction confidence (e.g. “I am pretty sure of myself in interacting with people from different cultures”), Interaction enjoyment (e.g. “I get upset easily when interacting with people from different cultures”) and Interaction attentiveness (measure social behaviors related to personal ability of attentiveness and perceptiveness in interactions; e.g. “I am sensitive to my culturally-distinct counterpart’s subtle meanings during our interaction”). The internal reliability of the scale was good (α = .88). The mean global ISS score was 4 ± .57. When the scores on the subscales are observed, the students record the highest score on the Respect for cultural diversity subscale (M = 4.30; SD = .76), and the lowest on the Interaction attentiveness subscale (M = 3.27; SD = .95). Female students are more interculturally sensitive than male students, both in terms of the total score (t(467) = -7.36, p < 0.01, d = .69), and in the scores on all subscales. Also, it was established that the level of intercultural sensitivity of students increases with age (r = 0.2, p < 0.01), that is, secondary school students are more interculturally sensitive than elementary school students (t(474) = 3.83, p < 0.01, d = .44), which can be explained by richer experience in diverse interactions at an older age. This trend is also observed on all subscales, except for the Interaction attentiveness subscale. The obtained results can serve as a basis for designing educational interventions or programs aimed at developing students' intercultural sensitivity. The above is particularly significant if we consider the importance of intercultural sensitivity for the student's life and active participation in a multicultural and intercultural society.