Assessing the Psychometric Properties of the Intercultural Competence in Teacher Education Questionnaire (ICTE-Q)

There are limited psychometric instruments that measure intercultural competence in teacher education programmes. Empirical studies that examine the psychometric properties of these instruments are scarce, thus the authors set about to develop the Intercultural Competence in Teacher Education Questionnaire (ICTE-Q). This paper reports the findings on the psychometric properties of the ICTE-Q. Sixty pre-service teachers in their third or final year of study were sampled purposively from three Higher Education Institutions in Malaysia. The data were analysed using the Rasch Model technique to validate the ICTE-Q. The analyses covered properties such as Category Fit, Item Polarity, Item Fit, and Person and Item Reliability. Data obtained from the study was successful in validating the ICTE-Q to be employed to measure the intercultural competence component of teacher education programmes in preparing pre-service teachers to teach in culturally diverse settings. Polarity Analysis for items towards a construct from the positive Point Measure Correlation (PTMEA Corr) value showed that items in the construct were functioning in the same direction to measure the developed construct. The results of polarity analysis were used to triangulate the item fit result which was considered acceptable to fit the Rasch model framework. For the Category Measure, the measurement functioning was as expected. Finally, both person and item reliability indices were found to be high. It thus can be concluded that the ICTE-Q is a valid and reliable instrument that can be used to measure the intercultural competence component of teacher education programmes.