Intercultural competence in the students of the universities of the Ch’ortí’ region of the department of Chiquimula

Abstract

The main objective of tris article in to determine the level of development of intercultural competence in the university students of the Ch’ortí’ region of the department of Chiquimula. In this area discrimination, exclusion when forming work teams   preventing coexistence in harmony ant total acceptance to improve their human development. Comparing the results, and according to the development of this component among the universities and careers investigated and by the methodological theoretical method way used in the study, it was considered a descriptive type with a mixed approach and a sample of 178 students from 320 of the total population, 178 participants who met the selection criteria.  The study is based on the theoretical model, Development of intercultural competence in university students, a training proposal for management in multicultural companies De Santos (2004) and data collection through the intercultural competence questionnaire Chen & Starosta (2000) and validated by De Santos (2004) in wich five components of intercultural competence are identified interaction involvement, respect for cultural differences, confidence, enjoyment and attention during interaction. According to analysis of frequencies and percentages, the results indicate  that 58.4% of students regulary develop intercultural  competence skills with people who belong to other cultures, which means that they are not being fully developed and located at a medium level because they interact with different cultures even if they do not like them, minimizing discrimination.