Abstract:

The present paper offers a perspective on intercultural dialogue in higher education from the perspective of teacher’s attitude and beliefs regarding intercultural dialogue in classrooms. The paper mainly regards the vocation of teachers and their competencies when discussing multicultural spaces in higher education. Culture is both learned and inherited but in the same time, culture changes, so teaching in intercultural spaces has to follow the dynamics of culture. The study represents the starting point for a further investigation supported by University Politehnica of Bucharest on intercultural dialogue in academia.

The findings of several studies demonstrate that teachers who perform their job enthusiastically invest greater effort and perseverance in their work, perform higher quality instruction, find ways to reach out to and motivate their students, and achieve better results in terms of students’ learning outcomes (e.g., Kunter, 2013; Kunter, Frenzel, Nagy, Baumert, & Pekrun, 2011; Kunter et al., 2008; Moè, Pazzaglia, & Ronconi, 2010; Roth, Assor).

The design methodology will consist of the application of Motivational Orientation Scales (MOS) proposed by Petrovic, Jokic and Leutwyler (2016). The methodology comprises three scales for the assessment of motivational aspects of teachers’ intercultural competence – Teacher Cultural Diversity Enthusiasm Scale, Teacher Cultural Diversity Self-Efficacy Scale and Teacher Commitment to Social Justice Scale.

The methodology was tested on Serbian students from Teacher Education Faculties and proved to a valuable instrument with consistency and validity. The novelty of such an instrument is that it uses a combination of methodologies used until now, combination of multiple assessment scales for teacher’s intercultural competence (The Diversity of Contact Subscale- Miville et al., 1999; Teachers’ Sense of Efficacy Scale- Tschannen-Moran & Woolfolk Hoy, 2001; Behavioral Intentions Subscale- Torres-Harding et al., 2012; Autonomous Motivation for Teaching- Roth et al., 2007).

The MOS instrument will be applied to Faculty of Engineering in Foreign Language at University “Politehnica” of Bucharest. Qualitative and quantitative interpretation will be provided in a context of intercultural interactions among national and foreign teachers and national and foreign students. The Faculty of Engineering in Foreign Languages being the only Faculty in the University who provides educational engineering programs in three different languages, English, French and German and benefiting of national and foreign students and teachers.

The originality of our research regards multiple aspects: focuses mostly on topics such as intercultural sensitivity and communication in a Faculty that has 25 years of experience in a multicultural learning environment; offers the possibility of testing the instrument on intercultural learning environments with teachers that benefit of actual experience regarding diversity of classrooms; provides a different perspective on intercultural competencies, perspective, related to professional background of teachers-mostly engineers.

Keywords:

Intercultural education, teacher's competencies, motivational orientation scales, engineering in foreign languages.