Improving cultural intelligence of education students through an education module

English: The value of teacher Education programmes should be recognised as being instrumental in the development of future learners and citizens of South Africa. Furthermore, the intention of specific Education modules should be planned according to outcomes based on contributing to more Culturally intelligent teachers. Nevertheless, many South African teachers do not have the necessary skill set to provide students in their classes with an appreciation for diversity and social differences. Students need to be nurtured to understand different cultures and have to interact with different cultures to learn from one another. This learning process contributes to Cultural intelligence, in short, CQ. This research study was conducted on the University of the Free State’s South Campus to determine whether a possible change in CQ was evident amongst two groups of students. The Education module, which specifically focuses on social reflections and issues of diversity, was compared to a control group of students in Economic and Management Sciences. This was done to determine if the Education module might have contributed to an increase in CQ as one of its unintended outcomes. Furthermore, a document analysis was conducted on the materials used in the Education module. This was done using the guidelines provided by David Plowright, namely deconstructing the materials to determine the informational, presentational, representational and interpretational value thereof. After analysing the data, I can confirm that the Education group of students had improved their levels of CQ in all domains of CQ, compared to the control group of students, who had only improved in the behavioural domain of CQ. Additionally, the growth in Meta-cognitive CQ that Education students had experienced was statistically significant, compared to the control group of students. This contributes to my argument that the materials used in the Education module had nurtured a deeper understanding and higher reflective ability in these Education students. In conclusion, I can recommend that, firstly, the relevant lecturer plays an important role in shaping the students in classroom by starting these difficult dialogues. Secondly, having lesser students in a classroom, as was the case on South Campus, also contributes to a better relationship between the lecturer and the students. Finally, the content used in an Education module should be designed according to definite outcomes to contribute to delivering a better teacher when leaving university.