Do Pre-Service Teachers Inherently Develop Intercultural Awareness on Placements?

Background

As the demographics during the last two decades in many European countries has shown, immigration has increased substantially, and Spain is no different. By 2020, 11,4%¹ of the Spanish population were immigrants from many different countries and cultural backgrounds and this change in Spanish society has subsequently also made classrooms more culturally diverse. Pre-service teachers, however, often don’t become aware of the importance of culture until they are immersed in the intercultural reality of schools during teaching placements. It is during this period of time that intercultural issues can come to the forefront, and pre-service teachers often find themselves in a ‘sink or swim’ intercultural situations.

It may be debated that integrating intercultural training in degree programs should be easy to do by offering optional courses or integrating specific modules to compulsory courses. Nevertheless, Primary Education degree programs in Spain are designed around discipline focused courses leaving content, such as intercultural training, absent in these degree programs. This is problematic, as Cain (2015) points out, given that there is little evidence that teachers have an awareness of what it means to be multicultural and this in turn means that they are not able to address diversity-related issues. Thus, it is essential to prepare future teachers to develop intercultural competences. This is echoed by Cushner and Mahon (2009) as well as Carter (2020) who states that “developing culturally competent teacher skills can enable educators to advance the learning of students from multiple cultural backgrounds while also providing students with the skills needed to succeed in this culturally diverse world” (p. 25). However, to address this issue, first it is necessary to ask the question: what does the term ‘intercultural competence’ mean?