Since the last decades of the last century, our lives have been marked by an accelerated and complex phenomenon of globalization that leads to continuous changes in the economic, political and cultural sphere (Boni, 2011). Particularly in Spain, the cultural diversity, historically present mainly due to the existence of different national communities and the Roma minority, was increased because of the influx of immigrants. This growing internationalization, associated with an intensification of cultural connections, along with both homogenizing and differentiating tendencies, has serious implications for teaching and learning, for which reason teacher training institutions could not remain oblivious to these circumstances.

It is the school’s objective to lay the foundations for a pluralistic, democratic and harmonious society; therefore, when facing the characteristic asymmetry of the interactions in most areas of society, school is the only place where contact between social groups should occur by all means and where the experience of cooperation or conflict is settled. In this sense, the philosopher Martha C. Nussbaum, whose goal is the children’s education as the ideal of cosmopolitan citizenship, states that it is "very urgent right now to support curricular efforts aimed at producing citizens who can take charge of their own reasoning, who can see the different and foreign not as a threat to be resisted, but as an invitation to explore and understand, expanding their own minds and their capacity for citizenship" (Nussbaum, 2001, p. 336).

            However, the traditional orientation towards uniformity –as principle of organization and operation of schools as well as of teachers’ profile (Nieto and Santos Rego, 1997)– ill accords with this stream of diversity, pointing out the poor training of education professionals in this regard and the absence of policies, resources and means that would provide a greater consistency of the school system to this new reality (Lorenzo Santos and Rego, 2003, p. 68). So far, teachers’ initial training, as well as different types of ongoing training does not involve a specific training to help them develop solid intercultural curricula (Marcelo, 1992; Peñalva and Soriano, 2010).

            To achieve a correct development of the Intercultural Education, it is essential that teachers acquire the so-called "intercultural competences", that is, the cognitive and affective skills, and practices required to manage themselves effectively in an intercultural environment (see Leiva, 2010; McAllister and Jordan, 2000). Consequently, including compulsory courses on intercultural education, cultural diversity, etc. in the curriculum is not enough; it is necessary to completely change teachers’ education programs to re-elaborate them from an intercultural perspective (cf. Aguado, Gil and Mata, 2008; Grupo Inter, 2006).

In this context, it makes sense to ask ourselves about the degree of penetration of an intercultural perspective among teachers. This paper is aimed at analyzing the results of a survey completed by Spanish teachers in order to bring us closer to the examination of teachers' beliefs and representations in connection with the attendance of immigrant students in the classroom and the school role in the field of Intercultural Education.

The fundamental objectives of the present study are:

1. To assess education professionals’ attitude about immigration and Intercultural Education, as well as their knowledge and understanding in this regard.

2. To estimate the influence of individual variables, such as teaching experience -general and specific with immigrant students- on the teaching staff’s ideas and attitudes and the fact of having participated or not in training activities within this area.

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