Cultural Intelligence of Preservice Teachers: Insights from Turkiye

Author : Gokcen seyra cakir

Abstract :Cultural intelligence, which primarily focuses on adaptability to diverse cultural contexts, present a significant area of research for teacher education in Türkiye, which currently hosts 1.7 million Syrian refugees from conflict zones. Starting in 2017, the Turkish government has made a commitment to fully integrate all Syrian refugees of school age into the Turkish public education system (UNICEF,2021). As a result, the arrival of students from conflict zones into the Turkish public education system has necessitated enhanced preparation for future teachers to address the instructional challenges in multicultural classrooms, while maintaining a culturally responsive approach in their future roles. Cultural intelligence emerges as a construct which refers to the metacognitive, motivational, cognitive and behavioral components, all of which contribute to an individual’s ability to adapt to various cultural environments (Van Dyne et al.,2015). Thus, this study aims to investigate whether the cultural intelligence of preservice teachers varies across different fields of initial teacher education. A questionnaire survey is administered to a sample of 130 undergraduate students from a major public university in Istanbul, Türkiye, utilizing the Cultural Intelligence Scale (CQS) developed by Van Dyne et al (2015). The findings are discussesd in lights of the implications for multicultural teacher education.

Keywords :cultural intelligence, pre-service teachers, teacher education.

Conference Name :International Conference on Gender Perspectives and Current Policies in Education (ICGPCPE-24)

Conference Place Burgas, Bulgaria

Conference Date 20th Nov 2024