The importance of intercultural competence has been recognized in educational systems of most countries in Europe as well as in Croatia. The development of this competence has been integrated into Croatian curricula in compulsory education for more than a decade. Although the development of intercultural competence has been primarily the task of foreign languages teaching, it is now becoming the goal of an increasing number of teaching subjects. This fact is particularly apparent in the current curricular reform. However, both social reality and previous research in this area indicate deficits when it comes to achieving goals set by educational documents. Therefore, an empirical study on a sample of 366 students was conducted with the aim of examining the development of intercultural competence within compulsory education. The method of vignettes was used to examine intercultural skills of elementary school students (grades 4–8). Among other things, poor integration of this competence in foreign language teaching was identified. Furthermore, there is no significant improvement in its development compared to previous research in this field.

中文翻译：

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现代社会与教育中的跨文化能力-义务教育的实证研究

跨文化能力的重要性在欧洲以及克罗地亚的大多数国家的教育体系中得到了认可。十多年来，这种能力的发展已被纳入克罗地亚义务教育课程中。尽管跨文化能力的发展主要是外语教学的任务，但现在它正成为越来越多的教学科目的目标。在当前的课程改革中，这一事实尤为明显。但是，在实现教育文件设定的目标时，社会现实和该领域的先前研究均表明存在缺陷。因此，对366名学生的样本进行了实证研究，旨在检验义务教育中跨文化能力的发展。小插图的方法用于检查小学生的跨文化技能（4-8年级）。除其他事项外，这种能力在外语教学中的整合程度很低。此外，与该领域的先前研究相比，其开发没有显着改善。