The Intercultural Sensitivity and Social Self-esteem of High School Students

The Intercultural Sensitivity and Social Self-esteem of High School Students

KERLA, Minela
REPISTI, Selman

Key words: social self-esteem, intercultural sensitivity, intercultural competence ABSTRACT The Subject of this study is to examine the intercultural sensitivity and social self-esteem in a sample of adolescent, third and fourth grade students of the International School of Sarajevo. The Instruments will consist of The Social Self-Esteem Inventory (Lawson et al., 1979) and The Intercultural Sensitivity Scale (Chen i Starosta, 2000). The results have shown a positive correlation between these two variables, and statistically significant correlation between social self-esteem with all facets of intercultural sensitivity. The female students reported higher scores in social self-esteem and are greater in intercultural sensitivity than male students. There were no statistically significant differences in these variables between the students of the third and the fourth grade, furthermore the effect of gender or class was not determined. The female students have higher scores in performance on all five aspects of intercultural sensitivity, also third grade students have higher average scores than those from the fourth grade on three facets of this variable (the other two are equal). Pedagogical implications of intercultural communication training and increasing social self-esteem have also been discussed.

Article
PeerReviewed

IBU Publishing

2013-05-03

1894