Role of Social Justice in the Relationship Between Cultural Intelligence and Attitude Toward Teaching Profession

Abstract The research investigated the role of social justice in the relationship between cultural intelligence and attitude toward teaching profession. For a sustainable education, social justice and cultural intelligence are seen crucial in teaching profession. The data of the study were collected from 404 prospective teachers studying at a state university in Turkey by using a paper-based survey. For collecting the data, “Cultural Intelligence Scale (CIS)” developed by Ang et al. (2007) and adapted into Turkish by Ilhan and Cetin (2014); “Social Justice Scale (SJS)” developed by Torres-Harding et al. (2012) and adapted into Turkish by Cirik (2015); and “Attitude Scale of Teaching Profession” developed by Üstüner (2006) were used. A structural model was established and conducted to hypothesize the research questions. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was used to validate the measurement and structural model. The SEM-based mediating analysis using SPSS AMOS was employed to test the hypothesized relationships. According to the results, cultural intelligence predicted the attitude towards the teaching profession and also social justice. Moreover, social justice was found to be in the full mediating role in the relationship between cultural intelligence and attitude towards the teaching profession. The research concluded that social justice was an important factor in increasing cultural intelligence competencies of teacher candidates to enhance their positive attitude towards teaching profession.