Exploring primary school teachers’ multicultural competence and its correlates

Abstract

The study examined multicultural competence of primary school in-service teachers at one of the local teachers training colleges. Data was collected from 183 in-service teachers who were randomly selected from all batches of students (first year to fourth year). Multicultural teaching competence scale that had 44 items was used as an instrument to collect data. The result revealed that the majority of the participants were sure about knowledge dimension of the competence scale but not sure about their skill competence. The t-test result showed that the participants who had taken multicultural training had significantly higher mean score in awareness, knowledge, and skill domains compared to the participants who had not taken multicultural instruction/training. The number of languages participants could speak was also a good predictor of multicultural competence. However, age and teaching experiences, stream and gender were not significantly related to multicultural competence.

Keywords: Multicultural competence, quality education, in-service teachers, primary school.