Due to cultural diversity in modern societies, the ability of intercultural competence has become increasingly significant. Cultural diversity is getting even more complex due to the intensifying forced migration. In Europe, the influx of refugees and migrants has generated polarized public debates of both welcoming and rejection which destabilize existing notions of living together in European spaces. This complex situation confronts schools and teacher education with new challenges related to teachers’ professionalism in dealing with cultural diversity.

 As key actors in education, teachers are required to deal appropriately and productively with cultural diversity in the classroom. However, many in-service and pre-service teachers are monocultural and have little cross-cultural background, knowledge, and experience to bring into the classrooms (Fuller & Ahler, 1987). Based on this rationale, it is not surpassing that 47% of teachers report high or moderate need for professional development for teaching in multicultural setting (OECD, 2010).

 In order to facilitate cultural diversity-related professional development of teacher, Intercultural Teacher Competence Profiler (ITCP) is conceptualized and developed. This work is done in the framework of the project “Serbian Education for Roma Inclusion: Understanding and assessing teachers’ intercultural sensitivity in Serbia” conducted jointly by PHZ, Zug (Switzerland), the Institute of Psychology, Belgrade and Pedagogical Faculty, Vranje (Serbia).

 Intercultural Teacher Competence Profiler (ITCP) is conceptualized as a multi-dimensional instrument that will enables teacher to assess а his/her current level of intercultural competence and to identify professional developmental needs related to a successful and productive teaching of migrant/minority/refugee students and dealing with diversity in the classroom.

The main idea underlying the construction of ITCP was to bridge a gap between intercultural theory of competence development and teacher provisional development theory by  integrating different aspects of intercultural competence (for example, Deardorff, 2009; Perry & Southwell, 2011) with the teaching-specific aspects of competence as defined within the COACTIV model (Baumert & Kunter, 2013), thus creating an instrument capable of assessing intercultural competence distinctive for the school context.

The first step in this endeavor was to identify instruments that measure various aspect of intercultural competence resulted and which are evaluable for use free of charge. This mapping results in a total of 9 instruments. After analyzing the list of instruments and constructs they measure, the main task was to define the dimensions and facets of intercultural teacher competences that would be adequately represented within the COACTIVE model.

This phase of research resulted in conceptualization of three COACTIVE dimensions and 10 facets that belong to these dimensions: 1) Teachers’ beliefs, values and goals (Appreciation of cultural diversity, Ethno-relative worldview, Goals of intercultural education and Attitudes towards integration); (2) Motivational orientation (Intrinsic motivation for dealing with cultural diversity, Self-efficacy in dealing with cultural diversity and Commitment to social justice) and (3) Self-regulation (Flexibility, Emotional self-monitoring and Tolerance of ambiguity).

The aim of the paper is to outline the process of construction, psychometric evaluation and validation of three scales in the self-regulation dimension of teachers’ intercultural competence.

 Facets that belong to self-regulation dimension of teachers’ intercultural competence are defined as following:  

(1.) Teachers’ flexibility to deal with cultural diversity - ability to adjust behavior and to change behavioral patterns in response to unexpected, unknown or constrained situations and circumstances in culturally diverse classroom.

(2.) Teachers’ emotional self-regulation in school specific intercultural situations – ability to consciously observe emotional reactions in stressful intercultural situations and to find appropriate ways to cope with them;

(3.) Teachers’ tolerance of ambiguity in school specific intercultural situations - degree of emotional tolerance related to ambitious and unpredictable school specific intercultural situations; not seeing these situations as emotionally threatening and provoking frustration, anxiety and discomfort.

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