Abstract:
The aim of this research is to find out the effects of two variables on primary and
secondary school teacher candidates’ intercultural sensitivity and ethnocentrism
levels. One of the variables is the subject matter they studied at university and the
other variable is gender. The research model is descriptive. The study group consists
of 314 volunteer teacher candidates who attended a private course to prepare for
Public Personnel Selection Examination (aka. KPSS) during 2014-2015 academic
year. Intercultural sensitivity level of teacher candidates was measured by
Intercultural Sensitivity Scale developed by Chen and Starosta (2000) and their
ethnocentrism level was measured by Ethnocentrism Scale developed by Neuliep and
McCroskey (1997). Linguistic equivalence, validity and reliability studies of two scales
were done by Ustun (2011). One way analysis of variance (ANOVA) and independent
samples T test were used to analyze the data. Findings of the research showed that
there is a statistically significant difference between teacher candidates’ intercultural
sensitivity levels in terms of their departments at university, type of high school that
they attended. Findings also showed that there is a statistically significant difference
between teacher candidates’ ethnocentrism levels in terms of their departments at
university.
