Conflict management style and self-awareness as determinants of intercultural effectiveness of public elementary school teachers in Region XI :

Abstract

The purpose of this mixed methods convergent study was to describe the influence of exogenous variables on the endogenous variable as well as to explore the experiences of public elementary school teachers’ self-awareness and conflict management styles towards shaping their intercultural effectiveness. In quantitative strand, a survey questionnaire was utilized to selected 400 public elementary school teachers from the 11 Divisions of Region XI as respondents. On the other hand, the qualitative data was collected through in-depth interview with 10 participants and seven during focus group discussion. The results reveal that the self awareness and conflict management style of elementary school teachers significantly influence their intercultural effectiveness. They are amenable with the idea that conflict management style and self-awareness have great impact in dealing with people from different cultures. There were four themes that emerged in the qualitative results of the study regarding the experiences of teachers’ intercultural effectiveness namely: interactant respect, interaction relaxation, message skill, and identity maintenance. The qualitative results conform to that of the quantitative results.