1. Introduction
Globalization has intensified the communicative interaction between cultures, giving rise to the need in higher education institutions to develop the relevant skills to deal with it in students. One is intercultural competence (IC), conceptualized as a set of skills, attitudes, and behaviors necessary for positive interactions between culturally diverse speakers [
1]. There are several relevant theoretical models of IQ. One model traces the evolution of speakers from an ethnocentric plane of communication (exclusive use of one’s own cultural frameworks to interpret other cultures) to an ethno-relative one (acceptance and adaptation of cultural diversity in a society) [
2]. Another model emphasizes self-awareness as a fundamental component in interaction with other cultures [
3]. A third model posits that IC is established as a mechanism of attitudes, knowledge, and skills to interact appropriately in intercultural situations [
4].
The Pyramid Model of Intercultural Competence [
5] considers the convergence of the dimensions presented in other theoretical models, such as attitude, knowledge, and ability. The latter model is shown as processual and dynamic, where the different stages of competition are communicated. The essential characteristic of this model is given by the pyramidal representation, meaning that the higher the degree of acquisition of the components of IC, the higher the degree of intercultural competence obtained.
The Pyramid Model of Intercultural Competence, at its base, is composed of required attitudes, such as respect (valuing other cultures), openness (learning about other cultures without judging them), curiosity, and discovery (tolerance towards ambiguity and uncertainty). The second rung of the pyramid is shared by knowledge and understanding in conjunction with skills. Knowledge is composed of elements: cultural self-awareness, in-depth understanding and knowledge of cultures, culture-specific information, and sociolinguistic awareness. The skills component integrates them: listening, observing, interpreting, analyzing, relating, and evaluating.
The third level of the pyramid corresponds to the desired internal outcome component. Its elements are adaptability (to communication behaviors as well as to new cultural environments), flexibility (using appropriate behavioral styles with a new cultural context), ethnorelative vision (understanding of culture from the specificity of each cultural context), and empathy (ability to identify with a cultural other). The desired external outcome component, which involves behavior and communication effectively and appropriately, is at the top of the pyramid.
In the international context, culture is considered in the European Framework of Reference for Language Learning, Teaching, and Assessment [
6] as an essential element for learning a foreign or second language, with IQ being a theoretical construct used for these purposes. In intercultural education, international organizations define interculturality as the equal interaction of diverse cultures through dialogue and mutual respect [
7]. From a critical perspective, interculturality is not accessible in education, but, rather, a colonizing, modern, white, and Western gaze is overcome. Intercultural education, then, would seek to approach cultural knowledge denied and subordinated by modernity/coloniality [
8].
Following the previous line, Chilean public policies preferentially emphasize interculturality in education, focusing on indigenous peoples without recognizing other cultures in curricular and pedagogical spaces [
9]. This has put even more pressure on multicultural coexistence in Chile, which has been deepened by the sustained increase in the arrival of the Latin American migrant population, estimated at 1,736,691 million at the end of 2022 [
10]. This fact impacts the education system, generating new challenges for schools and teaching [
11].
The migratory phenomenon has shown that opening borders affects cultural contact and communication, bringing with it effects on culture, manifested in social interactions where individuals or groups relate [
12]. This interaction is also affected by linguistic diversity, and there is a need to deal with the different languages that interact in school classrooms [
13]. This interaction in schools has increased in Chile, especially with the arrival of a population of Haitian origin that communicates in Creole as their mother tongue and not in Spanish, making it urgent to pay attention to the processes of linguistic integration in schools as a result of this new scenario [
14].
It is also observed that cultural diversity predominates in the current era’s globalized historical, social, and cultural context. This is an age where communication technologies have globalized, benefiting the teaching of various languages [
15]. There is, therefore, a paradigm shifts from a monolithic society to a society of cultural pluralism, which leads to the need to promote intercultural competence in teacher training. In this way, educational interactions with the immigrant population are favored [
16]. However, interculturality is also part of the pedagogical challenges of the 21st century, so it is necessary to develop skills in teacher training that help the coexistence of relationships [
17]. Consequently, it provokes the urgent requirement of pedagogical attention to culturally and linguistically diverse students in teacher training, which is relevant for integrating interculturality in a transversal way in the training curriculum in pedagogical careers [
18].
However, in higher education, intercultural competence has only been studied in recent years, giving importance to its development. Numerous communication problems result from multicultural coexistence, where cultural and linguistic differences converge or different interpretations of the communicative behavior between interlocutors [
19]. In this subject, studies on teaching second languages predominate in initial teacher education and teaching foreign languages [
20,
21,
22,
23,
24,
25]. There are also IC studies in professional health training [
26,
27]. As for the instruments that measure intercultural competence, the literature mentions, for example, a scale to measure intercultural empathy [
28] or the measurement of adaptation to various cultural contexts [
29]. In the Chilean case, based on the Pyramid Model of Intercultural Competence, a scale of cultural intelligence is translated, operationalized, and constructed to be used in pedagogy students from three Chilean regional universities [
30].
Consequently, studies related to the teaching of a foreign language in contact with another culture predominate in the literature on intercultural competence in initial teacher education, showing few studies in the field of mother tongue teaching. In addition, there is a need for more instruments that measure the dimensions established by different theoretical models on intercultural competence that are valid and reliable [
31], presenting a methodological gap regarding the matter. Thus, there is a need for instruments that measure this construct, guaranteeing the identification of the impact of teacher training.
Therefore, through this communication, the research team takes on the challenge of having valid instruments to measure the construct of intercultural competence. It is understood that, in the Chilean context, with the arrival of a migrant population, mainly from Latin America, teachers must possess intercultural competence to interact with culturally and linguistically diverse students. For this reason, this research seeks to construct and validate a scale of Intercultural Competence for Student Teachers (from now on, CIEP) in the context of a Chilean university. From this perspective, the research team wonders if it is possible to measure the perception of intercultural competence through this new Likert scale in pedagogy students, understanding that future teachers mediate the interaction between the different cultures present in the classroom through language.
4. Discussion
This study sought to communicate the process of construction and validation of a measurement instrument for intercultural competence in university teacher training based on the Pyramid Model of Intercultural Competence [
5] for the design and construction of the items, unlike other assessment instruments that feature only some dimensions of theoretical models [
28,
29,
30]. The instrument is a Likert scale that allows four dimensions of the chosen theoretical model to be measured, given that studies have pointed out that it is essential to integrate interculturality in higher education transversally [
18]. Therefore, this instrument contributes to the purpose of the evaluation.
The instrument proved valid and reliable for the purposes for which it was created. It should be noted that the validation of the instrument’s content is used through the inter-judge agreement, calculated with Lawshe’s proposal, ending with the triangulation of this analysis with the categorization of the qualitative comments made by the judges on the instrument. According to Romero et al. [
38], such decisions made it possible to gather a broader spectrum of information beyond pertinence and relevance to interpret the experts’ answers later and understand their frame of reference, theoretically and representationally.
In this sense, the values obtained from the CVI above 0.70 are consistent with studies that applied these indices in content validation, such as that of Zamora de Ortiz et al. [
48]. Confirmatory factor analysis was used for the instrument’s construct validity, where the four theoretical dimensions of the model [
5] included in this study were evaluated: Attitude, Knowledge and Understanding, Skills, and Desired Internal Outcomes.
The results show that when applying the CFA, the instrument fits the model hypothesized in the first instance [
49]. The model validated in this research allows us to affirm the composition of the construct in four dimensions present in the Intercultural Competence for Pedagogy Students (ICPS) model. This fact corroborates the initial underlying structure ratified by analyzing the factor loads of the analyzed dimensions (between 0.84 and 0.94), with items that present a high factor load. The literature shows that applying the CFA to validate the construct with which the instrument was constructed is recurrently used in education [
50,
51,
52].
This goodness of fit makes it possible to define an instrument with a consistent factorial structure and items that adequately measure intercultural competence in pedagogy students. Thus, the final instrument consisted of 32 items, eliminating all items representing the theoretical concept of openness. This fact evidences the appropriate fit, given that this dimension presented a higher factorial score of 0.3. It can be interpreted that the items related to this theoretical concept would not discriminate, probably due to the precarious teaching in university education about the intercultural pedagogical actions received by the members of the sample or as a result of assimilationist and monocultural models in the university curriculum, such as the Chilean national school curriculum [
53].
The goodness of fit between the CFA-derived and hypothetical models may vary depending on the sample size [
48]. The consulted literature indicates that a sample of 500 people is considered very good [
54]. Therefore, the adequate goodness of fit presented by the instrument after applying the TFA can be interpreted based on the size of the study sample, which is 521 students. In other words, the sample size considered more than 500 people, which influenced the adequate goodness of fit of the instrument.
However, even though the sample is considered very good, the researchers note limitations in the methodological aspects. Regarding reliability, Jöreskog’s rho could have been complemented with the Test–Retest strategy, which this study did not consider as a methodological procedure due to the scope of the research objective. However, it is hoped to respond to these challenges in future studies by applying the instrument to students from other careers that could be included in a second stage.
Even with the above, the results of the construction and validation of the instrument allow us to affirm that the instrument is adequate to measure intercultural competence in students of initial teacher training in higher education. Its contribution lies in constructing and validating an instrument that contributes explicitly to teacher training, considering the diversity in the Chilean school classroom that teachers in training must face. In addition, it is observed that most instruments that assess intercultural competence are based on something other than the totality of the theoretical dimensions of the theoretical models on the subject. On the contrary, they include one or two theoretical dimensions for their understanding.
On the other hand, as a projection of the study, the instrument allows for exploration of the development of intercultural competence in initial teacher training. For example, the theoretical dimensions of the instrument can be worked on didactically in a transversal way in the students’ professional practices. In that learning space, like internships, preservice teachers find themselves in classrooms with culturally and linguistically diverse students. Therefore, using this instrument makes it possible to project teacher training in intercultural competence.