EXAMINING INTERCULTURAL COMPETENCIES AMONG BOSNIAN HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS

Abstract

A period of globalisation and the interconnectedness of people across the world has increased the demand for greater intercultural competences among young people in particular. Being interculturally competent entails modifying behaviour in culturally appropriate ways when establishing contact with diverse cultures. The development of this competence is a long and never-ending process that which is influenced by a variety of factors, some of the most important being school policies, surroundings, individual work, personal needs and curiosity. The purpose of the current study was to investigate the impact of grade level, grade point average (GPA) and gender on intercultural competences by distributing the questionnaire developed by Portalla and Chen (2010) to 211 Bosnian high school students. The results showed that the students’ grade levels and GPAs did not have a statistically significant influence on their intercultural competences, whereas gender only had a significant impact on their intercultural competences on the Interactant Respect subscale. Due to the fact that the students should be taught intercultural competence at school, their competence is expected to improve in each study grade; thus, based on the students’ GPAs, this study may help teachers to identify a gap in their instruction and to modify their teaching content so that it contributes to the development of the students’ intercultural competence, as well as to the promotion of the importance thereof.