1. Introduction
A simple definition of culture is the way of life of a society. However, culture is a concept with many intricacies, such as belief systems, knowledge, art, the rules people live by, habits, and abilities derived from communities [
1]. Lifestyle is influenced by cultural belief systems, behavioural patterns, values, and attitudes, although classical definitions understand culture as “an acquired and transmitted pattern of shared meaning, feeling, and behaviour that constitutes a distinctive human group” [
2]. In most investigations, culture is defined as “those customary beliefs and values that ethnic, religious, and social groups transmit fairly unchanged from generation to generation” [
3].
Societies comprising diverse cultures involve multiple cultural perceptions that merge and diverge because of cultural differences, and these are influenced by factors such as race, age, education, gender, ethnic attributes, and history [
4]. In trying to talk about the same concept, some scholars use intercultural sensitivity in place of intercultural competence and vice versa. Nevertheless, the prerequisite skill for intercultural competence is intercultural sensitivity [
5]. This is another way of saying that the epitome of intercultural knowledge and sensitivity, behaviourally speaking, is intercultural competence [
6].
Intercultural sensitivity can be defined as a forerunner in attitude to successful intercultural relations and a predictor of cultural adequacy [
7]. Intercultural sensitivity can be defined as the quality that affects intercultural communications where the people are willing to grasp, accept, and appreciate cultural differences [
8,
9,
10] or to try to define cultural sensitivity as being able to accommodate worldviews that are focused on ethnicity and deal with differences in culture [
11,
12].
A recent study analysed two leading frameworks in the literature, Intercultural Sensitivity (IS) and Cultural Intelligence (CI). Using a sample of undergraduate students, the results show that personality traits work as antecedents for both frameworks and that when predicting behavioural adaptation, the fine-grained competencies outperform the broad operationalization of general competence [
13].
In Spain, intercultural sensitivity and life satisfaction in native and immigrant students were analysed [
14]. The results show that social self-concept is the main predictor of intercultural sensitivity in immigrant students, whereas emotional empathy, teachers’ perception of help, and social self-concept are the main predictors for native students. Family and emotional self-concept are the main predictors of satisfaction with life in immigrant students, and family and academic, social, and physical self-concept are that for native students.
An important piece of research in the United States concluded that religious affiliation and the number of times travelled outside the United States were significant predictors of intercultural sensitivity [
15]. As a microcosm of society, a plurality of cultures can be found in classrooms. This must be attended to, and for this, teacher training is essential. Smith and Jones’s work presents different attitudes of the educational community on intercultural education and offers guidelines on the ideal teacher training, proposing a tool to collect information to measure the sensitivity of the teaching staff. They also raise the possibility of permanent teacher training, with strong intercultural competence [
16].
Other researchers [
17] have also worked on the intercultural training of secondary-education teachers, giving orientations to put into practice and emphasizing the need to work on the emotional, attitudinal, and ethical dimensions of teachers to be able to ensure the necessary sensitivity and commitment to cultural diversity. There is no doubt that training and cultural experiences have a positive effect on young people, increasing their ability to adapt [
18]. This is where teachers play a key role as educators of competent adults in a diverse society [
19].
Various pedagogical methodologies have been studied extensively to promote the inclusion of migrant and refugee children in the school system of their host country [
20]. Nevertheless, to a lesser extent, the multicultural skills that teachers possess have been analyzed, especially in purely multicultural contexts. This is still one of the key factors that every teacher must possess [
21].
For this research, we decided to use the definition of intercultural sensitivity proposed by Chen and Starosta [
22]. The authors emphasized the differences between the idea of intercultural adequacy and potency, and this counters confusion in understanding the concept of intercultural sensitivity and gives a more comprehensive theoretical model to gauge this ideology [
23,
24].
In line with the advancement of establishing the concept of intercultural development, efforts have been continuously made to create self-report tools to gauge a concept like intercultural sensitivity inventory [
25] and intercultural development inventory [
5]. These are just the well-known ones. Although these scales measure similar constructs to each other, they have a large number of items. Current teaching staff are subject to large administrative tasks [
26,
27]. The use of a simpler scale to fulfil the Intercultural Sensitivity Scale (ISS) is justified due to its large potential for collecting information. Nonetheless, it was only the ISS that suited our construct by pointing out five constituents that explain the intercultural sensitivity of an individual (
Figure 1).
The study of teachers’ attitudes towards intercultural phenomena is not new, but there are certain deficiencies in the available studies [
28,
29]. The main problem with these investigations is that they focus on measuring communication skills or abilities [
30]. Researchers analyse how participants are able to communicate with and relate to different people. The contribution of this research is justified from two important perspectives. On the one hand, the study was directed at intercultural sensitivity as a measurable phenomenon; on the other hand, the study developed two multicultural contexts in which cultures and values coexist.
The aim of this study is to analyze the intercultural sensitivity of primary-school teachers in Ceuta and Melilla, two autonomous cities on the north coast of North Africa, where different cultures coexist due to the geographical situation. Moreover, these autonomous cities are compared with two other cities of Spain, Malaga and Granada, where a natural cultural coexistence is lower.
High values of intercultural sensitivity are important when we travel and are exposed to other cultures. However, the values obtained in daily life are much more important and even more so when the context is multicultural and subject to change over short periods. Teachers have the responsibility to provide students with skills and to help them to develop empathy towards others and to respect their differences [
31]. In order to transmit these skills and values to our students, we must first establish whether teachers possess them. It is a basic factor that allows us to develop a correct “cultural pedagogy” [
32].
4. Discussion
Intercultural sensitivity is not an instinctive or universal aspect of human behavior. Nowadays, the development of intercultural sensitivity represents a great challenge for educational systems where different cultures coexist [
43].
The results obtained show high values of cultural sensitivity among teachers in both cities. Similar results have been obtained in other investigations [
29,
44]. Within the educational system, teachers obtaining these results are a positive phenomenon. They are responsible for applying and developing the future competences and cultural responsibility of their students [
20,
45].
Although some significant differences are found depending on the variables analysed, the strength of these differences are low and these cannot be considered as relevant differences. Teachers appear to be open to knowing and relating to people of other cultures—a greater predisposition than has been observed in people of different ages who have experienced a migratory process [
46,
47].
It has been found in this research that the highest values appear in interaction enjoyment and interaction attentiveness, which means that teachers feel encouraged about interactions with other cultures and think that this interaction is useful. Although, as has been proven, just having an intercultural experience is not a guarantee of improvement in intercultural competence [
48].
Although it has been observed in this research that, between the considered multicultural cities (Ceuta and Melilla because of the geographical situation) no significant differences were found in two factors, differences in respect of cultural differences exist between Melilla and Granada, and Ceuta and Malaga. Further, regarding interaction attentiveness, differences are found between Ceuta and Malaga and moreover between Ceuta and Granada, and Melilla and Granada. Thus, the results seem to indicate that context can influence those dimensions [
49,
50].
The differences found in these cities are mainly due to two phenomena. First, the natural context in which most of these teachers have grown up, where they have been exposed to this type of relationship since childhood, and during their training [
51,
52]. Second, the specific training they have done. This training has been proven to have positive effects on intercultural relations [
53,
54].