Returned exchange students: Becoming mediating persons

This study focuses on what high school exchange students do when they return to the United States rather than on attitude charge. Returnees who had spent 2 months in Japan were asked how, with whom, and how often they shared their Japanese experience, how they dealt with stereotype questions, and in what ways they were currently involved with persons from other cultures. Results show that returnees have limited opportunities to talk about the exchange experience in school, usually deal with stereotype questions by “telling the facts” and “speaking positively,” and often communicate with and help persons of other cultures. The author concludes that returned high school exchange students are becoming mediating persons who act as bridges between cultures and offers suggestions for encouraging returnees in their mediating role.     

Intercultural communication and US higher education: How US students and faculty can improve: International students’ classroom experiences

Intercultural communication research rarely addresses the perspective of international students, who face challenges as they leave family, move to a foreign place in the US, pursue a degree, and study in a foreign language. Considering these students’ perspectives, US universities, which house large numbers of international students, should consider how they can help these students better adapt to US academic life. To address these challenges, we invited international students at a 4-year tier-one state university to interview, and we qualitatively analyzed their responses to identify how universities can help international students. Our participants noted that US students can befriend them, respect them in the classroom, and learn about other cultures to be more welcoming. Faculty have the most to do to improve international students’ success in the classroom; faculty can grade consistently, communicate outside the classroom, allow time for students to ask questions, help students adapt to US classrooms, speak slowly and eliminate idioms from examples, explain course objectives per industry, share interests and personal information, effectively use class time (particularly final examination weeks), and learn about cultures to better meet students’ needs. Additional research can diversify international students’ needs per their classification (graduate versus undergraduate), home culture, and expectations.     

Just Change the Channel: Media Violence and the Lack of Sociological Imagination

The lack of sociological imagination (Mills, 1959/2000) exhibited throughout U.S. American culture functions as a rhetorical obstacle that constrains Americans from understanding the media in ways that are oppositional or media literate. In this study, I administered a qualitative questionnaire to 127 students at a liberal arts institution, in which students were asked to discuss their opinions about media violence. Their responses suggested a lack of sociological imagination in three ways: (a) They understood the impact of media violence in personal, but not political, terms; (b) they understood media "effects" in simplistic and unsophisticated ways; and (c) they understood themselves to be passive media consumers, as opposed to active media citizens.     

“Have You Noticed any Changes upon your Return”? Vietnamese Alumni After Their Australian University Experiences

Many individuals who study abroad return to their home country with the hope of applying new learnings. This paper reports on a videotaped group discussion with three such returnees, in-service English language educators from Vietnam. It considers ways that these educators feel that they have changed through their study abroad experiences and how these changes are accepted and contested after their return to Vietnam by their students, colleagues and the public. By exploring the themes that emerge, we open up discussion about how returnees embrace, negotiate and contest diverse aspects of multiple worlds and the complex and layered nature of post-return identity.     

The measurement of intercultural sensitivity using the concepts of individualism and collectivism

Intercultural sensitivity is a concept that is frequently viewed as important in both theoretical analyses of people's adjustment to other cultures and in applied programs to prepare people to live and work effectively in cultures other than their own. Attempts to measure this concept have not always been successful, and one reason is that researchers and practitioners have not specified exactly what people should be sensitive to when they find themselves in other cultures. In the present study, scales were designed to measure intercultural sensitivity by examining (a) people's understanding of the different ways they can behave depending upon whether they are interacting in an individualistic or a collectivist culture, (b) their open-mindedness concerning the differences they encounter in other cultures, and (c) their flexibility concerning behaving in unfamiliar ways that are called upon by the norms of other cultures. A 46-item Intercultural Sensitivity Inventory (ICSI) was developed and tested among participants at the East-West Center in Hawaii and among graduate students in an MBA program who were contemplating careers in international business. The scoring of the items dealing with individualism and collectivism was different than for most measuring instruments. People indicated whether they would engage in certain behaviors (e.g., disagreeing with others openly) in an individualistic country such as the United States, and whether they would engage in the same behavior in a collectivistic country such as Japan. This allowed scoring based on people's sensitivity to the different behaviors considered appropriate in the two types of cultures. Results indicated that the instrument had adequate reliability (r = .84 for the East-West Center sample) and validity. People with high scores on the ICSI instrument were chosen as most able to interact effectively across cultures by a panel of experts; enjoyed working on complex tasks that demanded extensive intercultural interaction; enjoyed engaging in other intercultural activities such as eating different ethnic foods; and had spent long periods of time (more than three years) living in another culture. A factor analysis of ICSI showed that the concepts of individualism and collectivism as envisioned by previous researchers (e.g., Triandis, Hofstede, Schwartz) were constructs that people used in thinking about behavior in their own and other cultures. A practical conclusion for the content of cross-cultural training programs is that people can be encouraged to modify specific behaviors so that they are appropriate to the culture in which they find themselves and so that they will have a greater chance of achieving their goals.     

Analysing change among study abroad students. A novel application of the person-centred approach to alcohol use patterns

This study re-analysed longitudinal data on international students’ alcohol use to demonstrate the practical value of person-centred statistical techniques, such as Latent Class Analysis (LCA) and its longitudinal extension Latent Transition Analysis (LTA). These techniques offer new analytic perspectives, can reveal typologies (i.e., subpopulations characterized by different profiles) and examine change (i.e., transition probabilities) in outcomes of interest. The use of these approaches remains limited in the intercultural research field, however. A step-by-step guide to the use of LCA and LTA is presented. The analyses demonstrate how alcohol use profiles can be identified, how transitions across profiles as students move from home to overseas can be examined and are affected by students' motivation to study abroad and their adjustment to the host environment. The validity for study abroad students of the four-class model of drinker types found in other populations was confirmed. Results, however, challenge the dominant view that most students increase alcohol intake during study abroad experiences, and indicate that moderate drinkers are at greatest risk of transitioning to heavy drinking as they travel abroad. Implications and suggestions for use of these statistical techniques by intercultural research specialists are discussed.     

Naming a Personal “Unearned” Privilege: What Pre-service Teachers Identify After a Critical Multicultural Education Course

This qualitative study systematically documents pre-service teachers' responses to a writing prompt asking them to name a personal “unearned” privilege on an end-of-term final assessment. Findings suggest that typical White/European heritage pre-service teachers can name privileges that have advantaged their own lives, even after one 14-week critical multicultural education course. Categories reveal patterns in participants' responses about their own privilege that are traditionally attended to in critical multicultural education curriculum, such as White privilege. However, student responses show that students are most comfortable talking about inherited privileges related to social class and race is named at a lower rate. Other responses show a range of privileges that students can draw on when they reflect on the structured nature of privilege in society. Overall, our findings suggest that when opportunities are created for students to grapple with complex, personal, emotional concepts, the vast majority of students are willing and able to perform this type of reflection and analysis. This work begins a discussion of what kinds of social privilege are more easily discussed in a high stakes assessment after experiences in critical multicultural education. Our findings provide nuanced understandings of how typical pre-service teachers name their own personal unearned privileges and deconstruct their experiences of privilege. Our findings suggest that attention to privileges associated with social class could provide powerful entry into examinations of other personal privileges in critical multicultural education.     

Intercultural communication between Chinese college students and foreign teachers through the English corner at an elite language university in Shanghai

This paper uses an ethnographic approach and draws critical pedagogical and sociolinguistic insights from Pierre Bourdieu to explore Chinese college students’ participation in an English Corner program at an elite language university in Shanghai. Accordingly, this paper promotes scholarly conversations about intercultural communication between Chinese college students and foreign teachers from English-speaking countries. By underpinning the concepts of intercultural capital, this paper analyzes these themes: (a) linguistic habitus and capital in the stratified field of elite language education; (b) articulating English proficiency; (c) bridging cultural distance and improving intercultural competence; and (d) personal growth and professional development. This paper critically interprets Chinese college students’ benefits and mutual relationships with foreign faculty from English-Speaking Countries; how they cultivated intercultural capital in the field of elite education beyond linguistic capital, how they strove to maintain their accumulated capital to secure better career prospects, and what the roles of international faculty should be.     

“I Have a Voice”: Reexamining Researcher Positionality and Humanizing Research With African Immigrant Girls

This personal perspective piece examines the researcher’s positionality through the stance of humanizing research in multiethnic youth communities. Drawing on Paris and Paris and Winn’s notions on humanizing research, this article reexamines positionality by revisiting two subjectivities in a three-year qualitative case study with African immigrant girls. This reexamination considers the ways in which the research and the participants participated in dialogic consciousness-raising that were personal and interconnected. Overall, this personal essay analyzes the ways in which the researcher and the participants fostered relationships while transforming their communities to reflect and act upon the world around them. In doing so, they explored the humanizing nature of what it means to “have a voice” together.     

Not exotic,but too familiar…

ABSTRACT

Urbanization over in last three decades in China has produced and accumulated more and more complex problems and challenges in everyday life. People need different spaces and ways to learn about them, not only to understand what kind of problems they face, but also find a way to act together in order to change their passive situation and take part in the process which always seem to be dominated by government and technology. “Womende Chengshi” (Our Cities) citizen forum was built in 2012 and has lasted for almost 5 years in Shanghai. It aims to create a new educational space for citizens to discuss emerging city problems and to imagine alternative ways of urban life. After a concise introduction about this forum in Chinese social context, this paper will focus on three points. First, while the ideal setting suggests that citizens are everyone living in the city, “Our Cities” actually confronts the concrete ones shaped by various spaces and limited times in the whole city system. So how to struggle with different forces in limited time and space in everyday life is the main duty this forum needs to face. The third point follows: what kind of standard we could have to estimate such self-education process?     

Reframing Schooling to Liberate Gender Identity

Gender and gender identity are policed by the social environment in myriad ways. For those who challenge normative binaries, they can be positioned to experience different forms of violence. Though mindsets, social movements, and changes in policies have spurred material, social, and economic gains for those who challenge expectations of gender identity binaries, schools continue to inherit dichotomous messages about gender identity. On one hand, schools are expanding anti-bullying policies by enumerating gender identities, shifting names of Gay-Straight to Queer and Sexuality Alliances to attend to intersectional identities, addressing gender identity concerns in professional development trainings, but the field of teacher education has yet to systemically and longitudinally address gender identity for students from pre-K to university levels. As a result, educators are left ill-prepared about how to affirm and recognize gender identity in coursework, curriculum, and pedagogy. As we come to understand how and in what ways schools foreclose possibilities for students to experience gender identity self-determination, shifts in awareness can open up possibilities for schools to honor and liberate gender identities.     

Discovering ethnic root behavior patterns: Towards an applied Canadian ethnic studies

This paper reports a method used with six groups of either students or community professionals, since 1977, to experiment with inductive ways of identifying “ethnic root” behavior patterns. Such patterns are hypothesized to develop beyond the immigrant generation as ethno-culturat patterns and are passed on in the context of socialization. An acculturative framework is proposed to denote benchmarks in the cultural accomodation of individuals and families, through several generations. Along with this framework, the evolution of an ethnic behavior pattern is graphically depicted.A method is developed to identify the pattern beyond the level of conscious remembrance; (it is assumed that adult immigrants will remember the patterns from the country of origin). Although the method is interesting as an avenue of investigation in its own right, it was developed primarily as a conceptual tool to assist community professionals to understand ethnic-related material in their daily work. Three uses of the framework are outlined. First, it draws attention, in the counselling situation, to the level of integration into Canadian society that the client displays. Second, by getting in touch with the personal ethnic pattern that they own, the practitioner him/herself begins to understand the nature of ethno-culture, and thereby appreciate the presence of it in others. Third, the method permits the practitioner to identify personal values of an ethno-cultural sort that can interfere with practice.     

Media images

As we travel through life, our journeys offer myriad observations, relationships, and experiences. By chance and choice, our journeys align closely with and are guided by other people's journeys; from these associations we form a sense of our individual cultural characteristics and self-identities. Simultaneously, our journeys follow courses that remain distant and distinct from other people's paths; yet our observations and interpretations from afar also contribute strongly to the formulation of individual cultural characteristics and self-identities. Throughout life's dynamic encounters and events, each of us continues to formulate, reformulate, and negotiate our self-identities as we traverse what seems like parallel paths-journeys that appear distant and distinct from other journeys, yet encountering equally powerful influences shaping our thoughts, beliefs, and actions. Rarely are we afforded the opportunities to investigate these parallel paths and communicate honestly with individuals who seemed far away and foreign; seldom can we truly experience multiple perspectives and cross-cultural relationships in our own journeys. This article presents the unique intersection of two parallel lives and the authentic exchange of multiple perspectives reported through narrative or personal life histories. The authors serendipitously met at a National Association for Multicultural Education (NAME) conference and by chance shared their childhood stories. The authors were raised in similar environments but from opposite lifestyles -lifestyles that paralleled one another and contributed significantly to their individual understanding of cultural characteristics and self-identity. Here they share their histories spanning 50 years while providing insights and guidelines for teachers and teacher educators to learn from our pasts and reshape our futures.     

Variations in the assessment of acculturation attitudes: Their relationships with psychological wellbeing

The concept of acculturation attitudes refers to the various ways that acculturating individuals prefer to live with the two cultures that they are in contact with. In the original acculturation attitudes framework, Berry proposed a two-dimensional structure. The two dimensions were: to what extent do acculturating individuals prefer to maintain their heritage culture and identity; and to what extent do people wish to have contact with others outside their own group, and participate in the larger society. When these two dimensions are crossed, four ways of acculturating can be distinguished: assimilation, integration, separation, marginalisation. The first goal of this paper is to use other ways of operationalising these two dimensions to discover the resultant variations in the classification of individuals into the four ways of acculturating. The second goal is to see whether these variations in classifying ways of acculturation lead to different relationships with immigrants’ psychological wellbeing. We examine both questions using data from immigrant youth in Montreal and Paris, and conclude that different operationalisations of these two dimensions do yield some important variations in classification. There are also variations across these ways of assessing acculturation attitudes in their relationships with the psychological wellbeing of immigrant youth. Moreover, these variations are amplified when taking into account the society into which immigrant youth have settled. The general conclusions are that it does matter how and where acculturation attitudes are assessed, and that these variations impact the degree of psychological adaptation of immigrant youth.     

Insulting Jean Massieu: Debating Representational Control of Deaf People in Mid-Nineteenth Century Britain

In 1876, an educator of the deaf and a ‘deaf-mute’ publicly clashed over topics ranging from the nature of deafness and the identity of those who are ‘deaf-mute’ to the best methods to be used in deaf education and what deaf children following those methods might be expected to achieve. The debate occurred at a point in the nineteenth century when expert authority ‘about’ deaf people was beginning to sweep away deaf people’s own right to self-representation. Although richly nuanced and highly personal, the debate’s occurrence at a period that studies of the history of the deaf community have identified as pivotal to deaf people’s categorisation as ‘disabled’ means that much of its complexity has been lost in subsequent historical over-writing. This article explores the debate in depth. It provides a valuable glimpse into the mechanisms of expertise, and the ways that both non-deaf and deaf experts understood who deaf people were, what they could do, and what their place within society should be at that pivotal time. It also highlights the rich complexity of a much more complex history available to those prepared to dig beneath the surface to expose historical texture.     

Empowering geographic questions with multicultural perspectives: Suggestions for teachers by teachers

Teachers frequently ask their students various types of geographic questions. The questions may be relevant to academic content and the learning process or they may be pertinent to students' personal lives. All geographic questions and conversations yield ideal opportunities for teachers to convey powerful multicultural perspectives integrated within the context of their curriculum and daily teaching practices. Many teachers are not aware of the meaningful learning experiences that they can create for their students by empowering their geographic questions with multicultural perspectives. Nor are they aware of the powerful role modeling they share with their young learners. These conclusions were some of the outcomes compiled by a group of 25 graduate students, all practicing kindergarten through 12th grade teachers, enrolled in a multicultural education course. They examined the links between various geographic questions that teachers ask their students and the multicultural perspectives that teachers model and reinforce with their students that communicate powerful messages for valuing cultural diversity. This article shares the results of their exploration and gives five suggestions for teachers to integrate into their effective instructional practices.     

Comparing students’ study abroad experiences and outcomes across global contexts

In this study, we explored the influence of international destinations on student experiences and learning outcomes in study abroad by comparing outcomes across international tracks within a common global program. All students take the same semester-long course then travel on one of seven international tracks to different countries. Our study treated each international track as a case and used a mixed-methods approach to analyze students’ journals kept while studying abroad to compare the experiences and learning outcomes of students across cases. This analysis revealed that although the cultural distance between the United States and the host culture appears to influence students’ experiences, several other factors such as the presence of a foreign language and visible historical environment are also important to consider. These results provide insight for designers of global programs regarding the implications of choosing different international destinations as the focus of their programs.     

Can EFL Speakers Communicate in English-mediated Classes?: A Case of a Liberal Arts Class for Engineering Students in Korea

The purpose of this paper is twofold: (1) to explore what factors prevent English as a foreign language (EFL) students from participating in English-medium instruction classes; and (2) to examine how dialogic teaching techniques enhance students’ participation in classroom interaction. Utilizing the notions of “communicative competence” and “truncated repertoire,” we first investigated the barriers to communication in classrooms. We next examined how EFL speakers are able to communicate in English-medium instruction (EMI) classes. The findings suggest that when the instruction was designed to reduce cultural barriers and to facilitate authentic discussion, EFL students were able to participate in classroom interaction, and they perceived discussion as a way to learn an unfamiliar subject taught in English.