Intercultural Competence and Self-Efficacy of Teachers in a Multicultural Environment

The article presents the results of an empirical research, which objective was to study the relationship between various components of intercultural competence and self-efficacy of teachers working with students from other cultures. Intercultural competence is understood as a complex multi-component concept that includes four basic components: intercultural interest, intercultural stability, lack of ethnocentrism, and management of intercultural interaction. In a situation of direct interaction with representatives of other cultures, in addition to self-assessment of intercultural competence, it is also important to take into account the behavioral choices in a situation of intercultural communication. Thus, the study was based on the hypothesis that all four abovementioned components predict teacher's self-efficacy. At the same time, the relationship between the intercultural competence of a teacher in the form of behavioral preferences and self-efficacy is mediated by the components of self-assessment of intercultural competence. Russian teachers from Belgorod and Sverdlovsk Regions took part in the study (N = 1261). The instruments for the study included Integrative Questionnaire of Intercultural Competence (IQIC), test of situational judgments "Measuring the Intercultural Competence of a Teacher" (TSJ-MICT) and Questionnaire "Self-efficacy of a teacher working with foreign students". IQIC is a self-report questionnaire that allows measuring the intercultural competence of a teacher. TSJ-MICT is a set of cases, which helps to identify the behavioral features of the intercultural competence of teachers. Questionnaire "Self-efficacy of a teacher in working with foreign students" is a scale used to assess the respondents confidence in how successfully they work with students from other cultures. An analysis of the study results shows that the four components of intercultural competence predict teacher's self-efficacy in a multicultural environment.