The Relation Between Multicultural Competency Perceptions and Democratic Values of Primary Teachers at Schools That Foreigner Students Attend

Abstract

The aim of this study is investigating the relatioship between multicultural competency perceptions and democratic values of the primary teachers at schools foreigner students attend. In the research, 499 primary teachers among 1980 teachers working at primary schools that foreigner students attend in Trabzon, Rize, Giresun, Ordu, Samsun provincial centers in 2015-2016 school year are included according to the volunteering and impartiality rules. The data is collected by using "Multicultural Competency Perceptions Scale" and “Democratic Values Scale". As a result of the study, it is found that the primary teachers at schools foreigner students attend perceive their multicultural competencies in awareness, knowledge and skills dimensions as "sufficient". Teachers opinions in seeking fairness dimension of democratic values is at the level of "I agree"; in justice, respect to the differences and equity dimensions are at the level of "completely agree". It is seen that, the participant teachers internalized the justice, respect to differences and equity dimensions of democratic values higher than the seeking fairness dimension. It is determined that there is a medium level relation, positively, between the multicultural competency perceptions and democratic values. It is observed that as the democratic values of teachers increase, their multicultural competencies perceptions increase; as democratic values decrease, multicultural competency perceptions decrease either. It is concluded that the reason of having higher multicultural competency perception is related to the internalizing the democratic values for teachers.