A Comparison of the Rating of the Importance of Multicultural Subcompetences by Teachers and Pupils at Basic Schools

The research study is concerned with the theme of the content of multicultural competence in relation to teachers and pupils at basic (primary) school. The basic starting point for research is a model of multicultural competence consisting of three elements: knowledge, awareness and skills.
In the research we focused on identifying the degree of importance attributed to the individual multicultural sub-competences by teachers (n = 62) and pupils (n = 944) at basic schools, and then the comparison of the results of these groups. The component goals of the survey were to establish the following: 1. what importance is attributed by teachers and pupils at basic schools to selected multicultural sub-competences; 2. what importance is attributed by teachers and pupils at basic schools to factors that may influence the process of pupils’ acquisition of multicultural competences at basic schools; 3. comparison of the data gathered for teachers on the one hand and pupils on the other, and the identification of differences or similarities in their perception of the importance of multicultural sub-competences and factors affecting their acquisition by pupils at basic schools.
The research tool employed was a questionnaire, which in addition to the demographic items contained a battery of 32 explicitly identified multicultural sub-competences, to each of which respondents were supposed to attribute a level of importance on a scale of 1 to 5 (1 = min. importance and 5 = max. importance. The questionnaire also contained an item concerned with the importance attributed by teachers and pupils to factors influencing the attitude of pupils to different cultures, foreigners and ethnic minorities. The following factors were offered: family, contemporaries, media, teachers and the pupils themselves (this factor was only in the questionnaire for pupils).
Teachers and pupils showed partial agreement in the rating of the five most important and five least important multicultural sub-competences. The attitude of both groups to multicultural knowledge is ambivalent. The teachers and pupils at basic schools identified family as an important factor affecting the process of acquisition of multicultural competences among pupils, and both groups rate teachers as the least important in this process.
Mgr. Jakub Hladík, Ph.D., Tomas Bata University in Zlín, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Pedagogical Sciences, nám. T. G. Masaryka 5555, 760 01 Zlín, Czech Republic, e-mail:hladik@fhs.utb.cz
Bc. Veronika Pagáčová, Tomas Bata University in Zlín, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Pedagogical Sciences, nám. T. G. Masaryka 5555, 760 01 Zlín, Czech Republic; e-mail: pagacova.veronika@email.cz