INTERCULTURAL SENSIBILITY AND ATTITUDE TOWARD THE INTERCULTURAL EDUCATION OF INITIAL PEDAGOGY TEACHERS; THE CASE OF UNIVERSIDAD CATÓLICA DEL NORTE, ANTOFAGASTA, CHILE

This research is framed in the initial teacher training field, especially in the area of primary teachers’ initial training. The objective of this study is to know the intercultural sensibility and attitudes of the teachers in the initial training. This particular case will be applied to pedagogy students in the Universidad Católica Del Norte, Antofagasta, Chile.

The intercultural sensibility by Chen and Starosta (1996) is understood as the attitude that is made from the emotional part of the intercultural competence. The intercultural sensibility is based on those characteristics that a person should have to develop the intercultural sensibility, within those main characteristic, the capability of show and receive positive emotional answers before, during and after the communicative intercultural interactions.

On other hand, the attitude is understood as emotional evaluations that belong basically to the feeling area, the evaluation of the realities as favorable or detrimental to the life of the subjects; through the attitudes, each individual show a way of understanding and define his position in front of the society, the institutions, the situations and the things that surround him”(Escámez et al. 2007, pág 42) to which will allow us to evaluate the real value of the multiculturalists belief of the initial formation teachers and how this is shown in the classroom (Cabrera, Espín, Marín y Rodríguez 1997 a).

Currently Chile is defined as an intercultural country, in which different cultures and languages get together. We can say that as nation, we belong to a new era, which must recognize and reclaim the request of the native and immigrant people. On other hand, it is necessary to establish politics of inclusion to the different cultures that arrived and stay in Chile. In this understandings the state of Chile has the duty of guarantee the opportunities equality and the development of people having into account their own values, customs and above all their integrity, which will determine his position as a person inside the society. In this context, it is imperative the promotion of a intercultural educational system as a cross-curricular main idea, that involve all key characters of the educational system in the development of an inclusive and respectful view of intercultural differences because of that we propose the intercultural education as a tool of social cohesion that can stop discrimination and social exclusion.

With the current reality, we are able to see the importance that teachers recognize the social and cultural diversity as valuable characteristic that need to be acquire since the early school stages to high school and beyond. It is necessary that multicultural education transform the monoculture vision and asymmetric education that already exist in the society. By cause of that we propose this research which main objective is to analyze the intercultural sensibility and the approach to the multicultural education of pedagogy students of the Universidad Católica Del Norte of Antofagasta, Chile. Another objective is to establish a data that allow us argue about to evaluate the priority of acquire this dimension in the initial teachers ‘program in the Chilean context.