Category: Challenging & Preserving: Culture, Inter/Multiculturalism & Language
Challenges and Success Among International Students: What Makes International Students Resilient?
International students face an array of challenges while attending higher education institutions. Among these challenges are the resettlement process of making a home in a new country, developing new relationships (e.g., friends, close relationships), and attending college courses in a country and culture different from their own. Using the grounded theory method, we interviewed international …
Discursive Fragments of Kayabi / Kawaiweté / Brazil Indigenous Youngsters About Life Project
The general objective of this paper is to present a study on the life projects, realities and expectations of young indigenous high school students from the Kayabi / Kawaiweté of the tribe Tatuí, in the city of Juara / Mato Grosso /Brazil. We used qualitative, bibliographical and ethnographic approach in education research to answer the …
Othello: A Legal Alien in Multicultural Renaissance Venice
Venice was like no other city in the world during the Renaissance. It was the beating heart of the Eastern Mediterranean. With its extensive political, cultural, and economic prowess, Venice served as a site of encounter between the East and the West. A seemingly quite integrated and racially diverse society, Venice was an opulent city …
Framework for Filtering the Expectations of Common Behavior and Standards in a Highly Diverse Student Environment
The European Campus Rottal-Inn (ECRI), which is a part of the Deggendorf Institute of Technology, is considered to be one of the most culturally diverse campuses, with one of the highest international student populations, in Germany. The highly diverse and international environment of the campus, which is set in a rural area of Bavaria, offers …
“People Are Poison” – A Case Study of Chinese Young Adults’ Printed Clothes as Linguistic Landscape From Wearers’ Perspective
Printed clothes have been treated as a special type of mobile linguistic landscape and wearing these clothes can be regarded as a conscious communication act. Previous studies have paid their attention on producers and printed clothes themselves, but wearer is also an essential step which should not be ignored in forming printed clothes as linguistic …
“Top-Bottom Deconstruction”: A Global Space for Art Education in Rural Society
Let us look at globalization as a trigger for the current creative arts education movement. Not only in big cities but the stretching development of arts education can also be seen in small towns and rural communities. Interestingly, globalization is not seen as an essential foothold in developing art education. Therefore, this research wants to …
Citizens of the English Language: Sociolinguistic Perspectives on Indian Subjectivity
This paper presents what I call extralingual citizenship which theorizes an expansion of translingualism to include the ethnoracial logic of the nation-state and demonstrate the entanglement of language, governance, and education in the policing of knowledge infrastructures and discursive practices. I build on the work of Kachru on World Englishes, Tupas on unequal Englishes and …
The Implementation of an Online Multicultural Sensitivity Course for Pre-service Teachers
One of the Sustainable Development Goals is to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education. To achieve this, one of its targets is to teach the knowledge and skills needed to promote peace and appreciate cultural diversity. In dealing with cultural diversity, the role of pre-service teacher education is crucial. With this at hand, it is …
Language Learning as an Investment in Home Settings to Reproduce the Heritage Habitat for Immigrant Children
During my Master’s studies I had the privileges as an insider researcher that many immigrant Chinese families presented me adequate information on their home education focusing on raising bilingual children in New Zealand context. One of the participants has created a home environment for her children that is extremely intense in Chinese features. In this …
A Case Study of How Unanticipated Preservers Work on Preserving Local Culture Relating to Textiles in Northern Thailand
This paper aims to present how unanticipated preservers have been part of preserving local culture, particularly in making textiles. The paper contributes to the understanding of the foundations of local cultural heritage practices relating to textiles, to contemporary practices of preserving local culture (LC), and to perspectives on ‘preserving heritage skills’ with different types of …
Developing a National Identity in Kindergarteners of Different Ethnic Backgrounds: Values and Practices of Parents in Hong Kong
Nation-building is important in national politics, but establishing a national identity can be challenging. It has long been perceived as an alarming issue that Hong Kong people’s sense of Chinese national identity is waning. The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) government has vowed to reform education “from the bottom” to cultivate an understanding of …
Developing a National Identity in Young Children of Different Ethnic Backgrounds: Values and Practices of Kindergarten Educators in Hong Kong
Developing a national identity is one of the essential political tasks of nations, but the ability to develop this sentiment is not unproblematic. Indeed, Hong Kong people’s declining sense of the Chinese national identity has long been viewed as an alarming problem. Recently, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) Government has vowed to reform …
Using Pre-Test for Assessing Familiarity With Japanese Culture of Foreign Students During Japanese Communication Class
After over two years into the pandemic, international student mobility is still not recovered in Japan and many of the exchange activities with students at foreign universities are still being conducted online. In 2022, we conducted an online summer school for foreign students from abroad to learn about up-to-date scientific research trends as well as …
Stories of Chinese-American Mixed-Heritage Learners: Their Mixed-Heritage Identities and Heritage Maintenance
This study aims to provide a better understanding of how Chinese-American mixed-heritage college students form their mixed-heritage identities and identify life events and incidents which help shape the mixed-heritage participants’ identity formation and heritage language and culture maintenance. This study involved eight Chinese-American mixed heritage college students in the United Stated. By analyzing the in-depth …
Preparing for Intercultural Sojourns: Understanding the Impact of Undergraduate-level Intercultural Education on Chinese Postgraduate Students in the UK
Intercultural language education that seeks to cultivate learners’ intercultural communicative competence has been an integral part of TESOL over the past few decades, but little is known about the extent to which undergraduate-level intercultural education delivered by Chinese universities is perceived as useful and valuable assets that Chinese postgraduate students can draw upon in their …
To What Extent Lebanese University Students Consider Themselves as Intercultural Communicators
Globalization has removed all constrained borders and distances among countries, governments, and business corporations. With this fundamental change, there has been an increasing demand for intercultural competent communicators to secure success in the 21st century marketplace. However, some universities in Lebanon, if not all, seem not to have IC as a part of their curricula, …
Supporting Your Child in Sexuality Education: Negotiating the School/Immigrant Family Boundary
Many studies have documented an asymmetrical and hierarchical relationship between schools and immigrant families (Charette, 2019; Périer, 2017). The research project Sexuality Education in a Multi-Ethnic School Context: Perceptions of Two Major Stakeholder Groups aims to examine the manifestations of this relationship in the specific and particular context of sexuality education (SE). In fact, a …
Oral History Projects: Practicing a Foreign Language and Exploring Culture While Serving Local Immigrant Communities
This paper offers a pedagogical framework for a community engagement project that can be used by instructors of any language. Over the past twelve years, students in Professor Maria Grazia De Angelis’ Italian classes have interviewed Italian immigrants living in the San Francisco Bay Area. To develop their language skills, they conduct videotaped interviews in …
Paragraph Writing Instruction for University Students
As the emphasis is placed on students’ practical abilities in English, the communicative approach, which focuses on students’ “productive abilities”, has been encouraged in Japan. However, this approach has resulted in poor basic writing skills, which are often associated with insufficient vocabulary and grammatical knowledge. Considering the current practices of writing instruction in junior high …
Integrated Culture in Language Teaching
For years, scholars have searched remedies to the inadequate treatment of the role of Culture in Foreign Language Education. On one hand, course book and syllabus designers treated language and culture tasks separately. Some go as far as to place culture at the “core” of language instruction, whereby the ultimate goal is cultural awareness and …
Maltese as a Foreign Language Teachers’ Intercultural Competence
This study sought to understand how teachers of Maltese as a foreign language (MFL) develop intercultural competence by exploring the importance of intercultural competence (IC) to MFL teachers, the characteristics of interculturally competent MFL educators, and the ways in which educators develop IC. The study adopted the interpretivist paradigm and a case study research design …
Capitalizing on Community Capital: An Analysis of Initiators’ Perceptions of the Purposes of Community Education
Community education is a versatile way for minoritized communities to organize education in support of their youth. The variety of community education initiatives meets different needs of different minoritized communities. To understand the workings of such spaces we need to look closely at the purposes they seek to meet. By interviewing initiators from a variety …
Immigrant Literacies: A Cultural Model Approach to Home-school Discontinuities
The relationship between the home/ community and school for language acquisition and learning is significant. Researchers have shown that a rift between the home and school holds serious implications for children’s literacy development. For literacy then, it is important that the home/ community and school coalesce at some point. Generally, what is valued by the …
Communities’ Cultural Capital for Sustainable Community Tourism Development: A Case Study of Charoen Krung Road
This research aims to study the knowledge factors and sustainable community tourism development in the area along the Chao Phraya River from Charoen Krung Road to Yaowarat Road, the charming old district and a multicultural society in Bangkok, Thailand. Primary data were collected from interviews of stakeholders or the people in the community in depth …
The Urban Gorontalese Language Choice and Language Attitudes, and Implications for Language Maintenance in the Region of Gorontalo Province
In a multilingual society like Indonesia, people often utilize multiple languages, each for different purposes. Their language choice might indicate their attitudes towards each language (Romaine, 1995). This study investigates language choice and language attitudes among the Gorontalese who reside in the Gorontalo province of Indonesia. The urban Gorontalese (n:331) from a variety of age …
Developing Future International Hospitality Employees’ Cultural Intelligence and Intercultural Competence
In response to the international trend in hospitality industry, hospitality groups in the world are actively expanding global markets. There is a need of international talents with intercultural competence when local companies attempt to develop new markets in other countries as well as when foreign companies would like to enter a new territory. College students …
Behaviours – Silent Conflicts at High Schools in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
In recent years, foreign investment has immigrated into Vietnam, particularly big cities like Ho Chi Minh city; which has drawn to the challenging changes to the national educational system. These changes focus on both students’ in-class and outside-class knowledge. This study explores the impact of foreign and traditional cultural values on students and teachers’ in-high …
How Do Middle Eastern Students See the World? A Study of Relational Versus Categorical Encoding
Evidence exists that the human mind can process information from the surrounding world (Kagan, Moss, & Sigel, 1963) in two distinct ways: individualists (Westerners) rely on categorical processing, using similarities to group objects, people, and events, whereas collectivists (East Asians) process objects, people, and events by emphasizing functional relationships (Nisbett & Miyamoto, 2005). However, the …
Whose Culture? Exploring Multiculturalism Through Ministry-approved Children’s Literature in the Republic of Croatia
This research aims to explore how the mandatory children’s literature, prescribed by the Ministry of Science and Education and covered within the school subject ”Croatian Language,” depicts Croatian cultural heterogeneity and global cultural diversity and whether it offers examples of vocabulary that would assist elementary school students in engaging in critical analyses about human-rights topics …
The Reproduction of Japanese and Foreigners as Separate Categories – An Ethnographic Study on English Summer Camps in Japan
Internationalization (or kokusaika, the “continuation of the practice of being open to the outside world while protecting and promoting the national culture” (Hagermann: 2009)) remains a pre-eminent, long-term goal of the Japanese Ministry of Education. As interaction between Japanese and non-Japanese is still limited in Japan, the Japanese government puts a great emphasis on creating …
Doing Multicultural Education in Times of Trouble: A Case of PBL in Bilingual Arab-Jewish School in Israel
Israeli society, like many contemporary societies, consists of various cultures and sub-cultures. This diversity finds expression in Israel’s education system, albeit through segregation, since the system is divided into culturally-based educational sectors, most prominently among Jews and Arabs. This segregation strengthens mutual cultural alienation rather than intercultural dialogue. Against this tendency, a few bilingual-bicultural Arab-Jewish …
Maloya: Performing Reunionese Identity
Maloya is a vernacular style of dance and music, born in the former French colony of La Réunion at the time of slavery. Slaves from Madagascar, Africa, indentured labourers and workers from India, China and France brought by the French colonisers to the sugarcane plantations led to a diverse mix of ethnicities, languages, customs and …
Gathering of ‘Tacit Knowledge’ through Oral History
The University of Malaya is the oldest campus in the country. Over the years, many of its scholars including professors and staff have retired; many who are distinguished and reputable experts in their fields. Hence, there is a need to gather tacit knowledge from these individuals rapidly before the information are vanished forever, particularly non-quantifiable …
Differences in Achievement Gap in Nepal: Analysis of Teacher-student Ethnic Match
The current study investigated the differences in achievement gap among the eighth-grade students in science, mathematics, social studies and the Nepali language subjects based on teacher-student ethnic match. Using the convenient sampling procedure, records of ten schools in Nepal were used for data collection. Using the non-parametric Mann-Whitney U test, an alternate to the independent …