Peer mentoring and intercultural understanding: Support for refugee-background and immigrant students beginning university study

This study explored the effects of the Equity Buddies Program, an intercultural cross-level mentoring course designed to link more advanced university students, as mentors, with first year refugee-background or immigrant students. It was designed to address the needs of refugee-background and immigrant students as they transitioned into university culture. The data included mentors’ written reflections, log books, and a brief demographic survey. Through the processes adopted in the course, it was found that cross-cultural pairing influenced mentors’ intercultural understandings, enabled cross-cultural relationships to develop and provided opportunities for students to interact with people of other cultures and religions. Mentors changed their views of others – of immigrants, of refugees, and also of Anglo-Australians. They experienced increased personalised understanding or gained a widened perspective of their mentees who were of cultures different from their own. Mentors stated that over time their interactions evolved into either a mutually rewarding friendship or a comfortable relationship within a learning community that valued collective learning. It is proposed that increased intercultural understanding emerges from an increased emphasis on the creation of meaningful, transactional relationships among culturally diverse students within a supportive academic environment.     

Department of Culture,Media and Sport's Peer Review Pilot

April 2009 saw the publication of the documents generated by the UK Department of Culture, Media and Sport's museum Peer Review Pilot. This Policy Review offers both an overview of the process and a conceptual critique both of the Peer Review Pilot and the McMaster Review criteria on which the pilot was based. It is argued that the McMaster Review is grounded on a reading of excellence as “life-changing experiences” predicated on an imagined transformative aesthetic moment and that it is only by defining excellence in this way that McMaster could secure peer review as a legitimate means of identifying excellence. When transferred for the purposes of the Peer Review Pilot to the museum sector – with its long traditions of pedagogic and civic reform – this narrow reading of “changing lives” is no longer sustainable. The dislodging of the McMaster grounding assumption within the practice of the Peer Review Pilot creates conceptual fissures that can be traced throughout the Pilot's documentation. Specifically, a reading of the Pilot suggests both a need for a more careful reading of “peer”, a recognition of museums' multiple lines of accountability (including to the public) and the ongoing need for methodologies that might allow for an understanding of “life changing” within a much border frame.     

Kuala Lumpur,July 2005

Abstract

This paper is a study of the impact of the Thai ‘Sixties’ on present day Thai politics, especially that of the ‘Peoples Movement’. In doing so, the study concentrates on looking at the influence of both political ideas and movements and the role of some important political actors from this period. Internationally, the Sixties Movement was characterised by a general rise in the struggle of oppressed groups on a global scale. Central to this struggle was the role of students and a new generation of activists in labour and peasant organisations. This took the form of movements against racism, sexual oppression and especially imperialism. Activists from this period are now to be found playing important roles in political systems throughout the world. However, their present day role is often in contradiction to their original beliefs during the Sixties. In Thailand, the ‘Sixties’ movement has helped to shape both the policies of the present Thai Rak Thai government and the nature of the Peoples Movement. Any understanding of the present Thai political scene has to include an examination of the mass‐movements that continue to struggle for democracy and social justice, together with the nature of various ruling class factions. Thai Rak Thai grew out of a need to deal with the effects of the 1997 Economic Crisis. Its Populist policies reflect a need to balance conflicting class interests in order to buy social peace. Many of the activists within Thai Rak Thai and those within the social movements are people of the October Generation who cut their teeth during the Thai Sixties. Their political beliefs and strategies reflect the events of the last 30 years in different ways. The Thai Sixties will continue to influence Thai politics and society in the years ahead.     

23rd Universiade 2005 Games Held in Izmir

Izmir, Turkey＇s third largest city and second largest port, has become the “capital of the world for the young” since around 30, 000 spectators, and students from universities from over 170 countries, were in town for the Universiade 2005 games, which took place between August 11 and 21.     

A World of Colors 2005 Exhibition of Oil Paintings by China''''s New Young Artists

In China, artists born in the 1970s can always be identified by the variety and individuality of their works. Unlike the earlier generations who shared similar strong social and political beliefs, the younger generation of artists doesn't really form schools with distinctive common features, such as the "scar arts" in the late 1970s, the "neoclassic" in the 1980s and the "new generation" as well as the "political pop arts" in the 1990s. Instead, they attach more importance to personal experience, inner conviction, and individual forms of presentation, resulting from the constantly changing social environment. Consequently, their works tend to be more diverged and alternative.     

A Cross-Cultural Comparison of Parental and Peer Attachment Styles among Adult Children from the United States,Puerto Rico,and India

Parental and peer attachment is central to perceived and actual communication behavior. This investigation examines perceptions of attachment among people from the United States, Puerto Rico, and India to investigate the variance in parental and peer attachment levels cross-culturally. Puerto Rican participants expressed less overall attachment to their mothers than did Indian and American participants. Indian participants conveyed stronger attachment to their fathers compared to participants from Puerto Rico. US participants showed stronger attachment to their peers than did people from India. This investigation suggests that the tenets of attachment theory are not culturally universal.     

An exploratory study on intercultural communication research contents and methods: A survey based on the international and domestic journal papers published from 2001 to 2005

With the progressive acceleration of globalization in the world, the study of intercultural communication is accordingly flourishing day by day on both domestic and international levels. In order to discern the current trends of intercultural communication research in China and abroad and furthermore provide suggestions for future research, the present study has made an analysis of 368 intercultural communication articles published between 2001 and 2005 in 11 major international and domestic academic journals, among which 203 articles are from 10 major domestic academic journals and 165 ones from the American journal entitled International Journal of Intercultural Relations. Each article is analyzed from two perspectives: the research contents and research methods. The results indicate that intercultural communication research in China is sharply different from research abroad with regards to research contents and methods. The main concern of researchers abroad is intercultural adaptation and intercultural training while the Chinese researchers are mainly concerned with cross-cultural pragmatics. As far as research methods are concerned, most studies abroad are conducted using empirical research methods, the majority of which adopt the quantitative research method. On the contrary, most studies in China are non-empirical research. Of the small number of empirical studies, considerable attention is paid to the mixed use of both qualitative and quantitative research methods. At the end of the paper, constructive suggestions are made for future research.     

受禅台访古

双是一年春草绿，依旧十里杏花香。在一个阳光明媚、云淡风轻的日子里，我来到了位于河南省临颍县繁城镇的受禅台。极目四望，我不禁满腹狐疑：这就是延康元年（220年）汉献帝刘协让位给魏文帝曹丕的那个所在吗？这就是终结汉代历史、开启天下三分书面的那个见证物吗？     

Designed for Sitting

"Designed for Sitting: an International Exhibition" & "Fifty Chairs: an Invitational Exhibition of World Famous Designers" were recently on view at the Museum of the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) in Beijing. The 130 exhibits by emerging artists and 50 masterpieces by great designers reflect leading concepts and values of the international design community today. Designers used a great variety of materials, such as paper, wood, rattan, metal,plastic, cloth and acrylic, to create chairs in various