Imagined Communities,School Visions,and the Education of Bilingual Students in Japan

The purpose of this study is to analyze the policies and practices of schools in Japan that serve large numbers of bilingual students. Using the notion of imagined communities (Anderson, 1991; Norton, 2001), I examine the relationship between the schools' visions for their students, their current policies and practices, and the students' identities. Based on the ethnographic data collected at four schools in Japan that cater to very different groups of bilingual children, I argue that schools have visions of the communities and societies in which their students will grow up to participate. Moreover, these visions condition the schools' current policies and practices and ultimately affect the identities of the students. Because the students at the four schools are expected to lead different futures, they are being prepared for different kinds of bilingualism. In this stratification process, it is the least privileged bilingual children who are socialized into the most impoverished imagined communities.     

Higher Education,Academic Communities,and the Intellectual Virtues

Because higher education brings members of academic communities in direct contact with students, the reflective higher education student is in an excellent position for developing two important intellectual virtues: confidence and humility. However, academic communities differ as to whether their members reach consensus, and their teaching practices reflect this difference. In this essay, Ward Jones argues that both consensus‐reaching and non‐consensus‐reaching communities can encourage the development of intellectual confidence and humility in their students, although each will do so in very different ways.     

Redefining rurality: cosmopolitanism,whiteness, and the New Latino Diaspora

ABSTRACT

In mainstream discourse, rural generally implies white, while urban signifies not-white. However, what happens when ‘rural’ communities experience demographic change? This paper examines how students from a rural, New Latino Diaspora community in a Midwestern state complicate traditional notions of rurality. Data from participant observations and ethnographic interviews indicate that students from this near-majority-Latino community do not view it as rural even though its population is under 2500. Students allude to an alternative youth subculture influenced by incoming Latino students from cities in Mexico, Guatemala, and California. They contrast this with the more stereotypical subcultures they observe in neighboring, rural, majority-white communities. Demographically transitioning, rural schools present unique contexts for students to not only encounter their own privilege, but also to learn how to leverage that privilege to further the aims of social justice. However, this will not occur without explicit and careful planning, implementation, reflection, and teacher training.     

Implementing a comprehensive behavioral health model for social,emotional, and behavioral development in an urban district: An applied study

Urban communities are disproportionality impacted by issues such as community violence, leaving children at higher risk of trauma, and increased adverse childhood experiences. This applied study addresses a research-to-practice gap by demonstrating the longitudinal impact of a district-initiated, school-wide multitiered systems of support approach to universal instruction, intervention, and assessment—the Comprehensive Behavioral Health Model. Results from more than 1200 students over a 3-year period indicate that this universal, integrated approach is associated with improved outcomes for students with a demonstrated level of risk, with the greatest impact on students with risk of internalizing behaviors. The findings of this applied study highlight the benefits of a systemic approach and enhance the discourse on robust universal screenings that can identify needs and assets of children within urban communities.     

The development of peer networks and academic performance in learning communities in higher education

In learning communities, students share their knowledge which might contribute to academic performance. This study disentangles peer selection from influence processes in modelling first-year students’ academic performance after the transition to university. Longitudinal peer network data were obtained from 95 bachelor students at two time points in a social sciences study programme with eight learning communities. Using co-evolution modelling in RSiena, we found that students help each other more often when they are already friends and students who help each other academically are more likely to become friends. The higher a student performs, the more often the student is selected as a friend or as an academic helper and the more often this higher-performing student initiates friendship and academic help relationships. Although learning communities are often implemented to enhance academic performance, we did not find evidence that peer relationships in learning communities influence academic performance.     

建设大学生社团,提升就业核心竞争力

大学生的社团活动在当今的大学校园中随处可见,尤其是在新生入学后的几周内,纳新活动成为了大学生社团的一个重要活动,许多新同学也都积极的参与到社团活动中去。大学生社会团不仅仅是大学的一个重要标志,其在大学生的生活中起到了极为重要的作用,它能够从多角度开发学生的潜能,使学生学习和工作的积极性有所提升,促进学生进行客观的自我评价,对于学生实践能力的培养和提高其就业的核心竞争力都有积极的作用。     

Connecting family,school, gold mining community and primary school students’ reading achievements in Burkina Faso – A three-level hierarchical linear model analysis

Family, school, and community play an important role in creating learning opportunities, but research on the topic tends to approach them separately. Employing three-level hierarchical linear modeling, this study investigates how gold mining communities are related to students’ reading achievements and how they interact with school (teacher and principal) factors, child health, and child labor status to affect reading achievements in Burkina Faso. Findings suggest that gold mining communities negatively affect students’ reading achievements, but better teaching practices and better principal management quality contribute to reduce this negative effect. These findings contribute to the literature on the resource curse hypothesis and school effectiveness modeling in developing countries. Furthermore, implications of the findings for education policy are discussed.     

Co-development patterns of knowledge,experience, and self in humanistic knowledge building communities

This study attends the learning sciences to the work of Carl Rogers and his person-centered therapy and education. Building on claims that knowledge building communities are idea-centered, as well as recent research in this area that has looked at learning holistically, we examine the notion of a ‘humanistic knowledge building community’ as an integration of idea-centered classroom knowledge building communities with Rogerian person-centeredness. We investigated an innovative course for graduate students in an educational technologies program that both inspired and informed this conceptualization. Our grounded theoretical approach combined with a microanalysis of one student revealed five patterns that knowledge, experience, and self can co-develop in a humanistic knowledge building community.     

Counterstories of college persistence by undocumented Mexicana students: navigating race,class, gender,and legal status

This paper draws from four sets of four in‐depth interviews and one subsequent focus group to examine how undocumented Mexicana students navigate identities and the meanings of race, gender, class, and legal status. We mobilize a critical race theory framework to center and explore the content of students’ counterstories. While majoritarian stories perpetuate stereotypical narratives that portray communities of color as culturally deficient, counterstorytelling creates a space for exposing and resisting hegemonic narratives in the home, community, and college settings. We argue that, through counterstories, Mexicana students are able to develop a positive self‐image that allows them to hang on to their academic aspirations, to persist in college, and to envision and pursue the possibility of success. We look at how undocumented Mexicana students’ narratives also reproduce and/or reinscribe elements of oppressive discourses of race, class, and gender in the contemporary USA. We consider some implications of our discussion of counterstories for educational theory and policy.     

How do school learning environments differ across Australia’s rural,regional and metropolitan communities?

This study uses data from the Programme for International Student Assessment, a large and nationally representative dataset, to examine how learning environments vary across metropolitan, rural and regional schools in Australia. Research has shown that school climate and learning environments are related to student academic performance, but little is known about the degree to which they differ across school communities in Australia. We examined principals’ perceptions of teacher and student behaviour related to school climate and students’ perceptions of teacher support, classroom disciplinary climate, and the relevance of education. The findings show that regardless of where they live, most students believe that schooling is worthwhile, and report positive relationships with their teachers. Perceptions of classroom disciplinary climate vary more across school communities, however, with students reporting less positive disciplinary climate in rural communities than in very large cities. Principals’ perceptions of teacher and student behavior related to school climate varied; with urban schools having much more positive results than schools in towns and rural communities. Finally, our findings show that students’ and principals’ perceptions of their school climate and learning environments are more positive in urban communities than in rural communities, but that the least positive environments are generally found in country towns rather than remote communities. Our findings suggest that attention should be paid to improving learning environments not just in the most rural/remote communities, but also in largish regional towns of up to 50,000 residents.     

Learning Communities,Academic Performance,Attrition, and Retention: A Four-Year Study

This study extends and makes unique methodological contributions to research on the impact of learning communities (LCs) on community college students. Much of the previous research was short-term, lacked adequate comparison groups, and focused on four-year college students. This four-year study controlled for instructor-related variables by comparing academic outcomes of LC students with those of non-LC students taught by the same instructor during the same semester. Differences in grades, attrition, and retention were compared between students enrolled in two pairs of linked English 101 and Psychology 101 LC classes and students enrolled in non-LC courses with the same professor. Student enrollment in the LC courses was associated with higher grade point averages, lower course attrition rates, and higher fall-to-spring semester retention rates. Reasons for the relative scarcity of LCs in community colleges is discussed, along with recommendations as to how institutions can encourage the growth of LCs on their campuses.     

Indigenous knowledges,universities, and alluvial zones of paradigm change

ABSTRACT

In the past two decades, Indigenous faculty and graduate students at research-intensive universities have been asserting a kind of cultural and intellectual sovereignty over their own academic production and participation. While colonization through assimilationist education suppressed – and continues to suppress – Indigenous community knowledge and Indigenous scholars have been drawing on Indigenist revival movements creating new academic works and challenging the conventions of what constitutes research. This article presents conversations in contested spaces regarding Indigenous identity and expression. It draws, in part, on the author’s own experience traveling between Indigenous communities and universities while supervising Indigenous PhD students. Universities are in conflicted positions as they ostensibly invite Indigenous expression, but resist the undoing of conventional hierarchies that maintain hegemonic equilibrium. Are Universities that open spaces for Indigenous knowledges and the place-based blending – and bending – of metaphysical and physical realities leading a paradigm change in ecological consciousness? Can Indigenous scholars and Indigenous communities be represented in academic locations in ways that redirect the goals and purposes of research and knowledge production? This writing is a reflection on emerging, and ongoing, questions of Indigenous advance in academic spaces.     

Communities of innovation: Individual,group, and organizational characteristics leading to greater potential for innovation

In this paper I will explain what I see as some of the core attributes of Communities of Innovation, or communities fostering collaborative creativity, and what we have learned from the research literature about each attribute. There is a critical need to design learning environments that foster creative thinking in students, particularly in the area of collaborative creativity. Many of the current problems and challenges graduates will face in society and industry are too large to be faced alone. However, the research and pedagogical understanding of how to develop skills in collaborative creativity is still underdeveloped. In seeking to understand what collaborative creativity would look like in education, I reviewed the literature on organizational and social creativity, along with social learning theory, to develop a framework of characteristics common to most environments that foster collaborative creativity in students (West, 2009). This framework describing Communities of Innovation explains some of the similar characteristics at the individual, group, and organizational levels of innovative communities.     

Imagined Community,Identity, and Teaching Chinese as a Second Language to Foreign Students in China

Teaching and learning a language are influenced by an imagined community involving interaction among members in possible worlds. From an empirical standpoint, relatively little is known about how Chinese language lecturers see their possible memberships to the communities wherein students from different countries participate, or how this perception affects their teaching practice and innovative pedagogies. In order to address this gap, this study explores the teaching lives of four lecturers who teach Chinese as a second language (CSL) to foreign students in China. Drawing upon a three-year longitudinal study of interview data triangulated with journal entries and classroom observation, the findings reveal that lecturers’ imagined identities may transform into practical identities due to the idea of treating foreign students as legitimate foreigners but illegitimate Chinese language users, and the intensified pressures and insecurities of being a part-time lecturer. However, the combined efforts of lecturers’ perseverance, knowledge and competence, institutional support, available educational resources, and positive evolution of identity may prevent lecturers’ imagined communities from collapsing, and possibly facilitate a shift in identification from “struggling teacher” to “determined teacher.” Relevant implications for teaching Chinese and teacher education are discussed.     

Cultural Competence Development,Critical Service Learning,and Latino/a Youth Empowerment: A Qualitative Case Study

As universities create service-learning programs, educators are experimenting with pedagogical approaches that enhance learning outcomes while benefiting communities. We present a qualitative case study of a radio-based, service-learning program, grounded in a Freirean foundation and aimed at developing the cultural competence and sense of citizenship of undergraduate students while empowering working-class high school Latino/a students. Undergraduate students benefited the most from the program; they enhanced their cultural competence skills, awareness of social issues, and sense of civic responsibility. Latino/a high school students who stayed in the program for at least a year developed self-confidence, self-esteem, and a sense of self-efficacy.     

Developing an empirically based typology of attitudes of entering students toward participation in learning communities

Learning communities (LC) seek to strengthen and enrich students’ connections to each other, their teachers, and the subject matter they are studying. Their success depends on the nature of the learning community program, the learning styles of the students who participate and the reasons why students entered the program. This study uses a combination of factor and cluster analysis to develop a typology of student experiences that is used to examine the efficacy of the Learning Community program at Temple University, Philadelphia. The findings identify distinctive types of learning community experience and show that not all types match well with all students. The study questions the common assumption that learning communities are always helpful to student learning and development, and cautions against the belief that benefits will inevitably accrue. The variation in the value and impact on students of this long‐standing learning community program suggests that the evaluative burden of proof is for administrators to clearly demonstrate and not assume a uniformly positive impact of learning communities.     

Activism,identity and service: the influence of the Asian American Movement on the educational experiences of college students

This article emphasises two major themes that address the influence of the Asian American Movement: (1) encouraging students to broaden the discourse on race and ethnic relations by redefining categories and challenging prevalent assumptions; (2) an increased tolerance and frequency in course offerings that examine and centralise the histories, literature and political underpinnings of Asian Americans and ethnic (i.e. Japanese) specific communities, which has equipped students to engage in discourse and community action. Countering dominant narratives through unification and education is the means by which Asian American students fought for representation and fair treatment.     

大学生社团在学生成才中作用发挥的调查与思考--以唐山师范学院为例

大学生社团在推动校园文化建设、优化学生成长环境、提高大学生综合素质等方面的作用发挥越来越被重视。以唐山师范学院为例,调查了大学生社团在学生成长成才中作用的发挥情况,分析了制约作用发挥的因素,提出了更好地发挥实效的途径。     

高校学生社团的问题及对策研究

学生社团是高校校园文化的重要载体,做好学生社团工作,对于促进青年学生健康成长和素质教育的全面推进具有十分重要的意义。文章就山西省高校学生社团存在的问题进行了剖析,并提出相应的改进措施和建设方案,促进高校学生社团的建设。