A study of the impact of intercultural competency training on new teachers in response to changing student demographics

The U.S. student demographics are changing rapidly with a growing trend of increased diversity. This increasing trend shows that the public education student population has shifted. NCES reports that 50.3% of the nation's K-12 students represent minorities as a result of decreasing numbers of White and Black students and increasing numbers of Hispanic and Asian students. Meanwhile, although the teaching population has almost doubled, the ethnicity of the teacher demographics has hardly shifted from 2000 (85% White) to 2011-12 (82.5% White). This student demographic shift requires all K-12 teachers to acquire and extend their intercultural competency skills to meet the diversity challenge and intercultural competence is an increasing need for effective teachers.;This study focused on the impact of intercultural training on new teachers in a suburban school district in which the demographics were similar to the nation's teacher demographics and that had a minority majority student population. The study used an experimental pre-posttest control-group design with a sample of 58 K-8 teachers new to the district. The study was based on Bennett's Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity (DMIS), the basis of the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDIRTM). The sample was randomly divided into an experimental and a control group. Both groups received the IDIRTM to assess their intercultural competence stages prior to the intercultural training (the pretest). The experimental group received the intercultural training, and then both groups were administered the IDIRTM again to assess the impact of the intercultural training on the experimental group (the posttest).;Examination of the IDIRTM pre- and posttest data revealed that the experimental group had a significant change in its developmental intercultural competency scores from pretest Developmental Orientation (DO) (M = 96.40) to the the posttest DO (M = 115.97) and its Orientation Gap score decreased from 26.29 to 16.39. The control group showed no significant change. The study's concludes that K-12 public education school districts could further develop teachers' intercultural competency skills using Bennett's DMIS and a validated tool such as the IDIRTM to provide meaningful intercultural training.