Who Wears the Pants? The (Multi)Cultural Politics of The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants

Novels that prioritise the connectedness and strength of girls’ friendships without employing the pervasive trope of “mean girls”—those who typically divide in order to conquer other girls—are potentially empowering in their refusal to perpetuate limited and binary accounts of adolescent femininity. While Ann Brashares’ cult novel (now film), The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (2005a; originally 2002) appears to be representative of this textual shift, underpinning the overt call to value girls’ relationships is a deeply conservative, assimilationist narrative that relies on an acceptance of traditional patriarchal values. This article analyses the ways in which the novel appropriates “multicultural difference” to valorise, sustain and naturalise the central position and authority of patriarchy in the lives of young girls, regardless of their cultural heritage. Kate McInally currently works as a research fellow, and teaches children’s literature at Deakin University, Burwood, Australia. Her particular research interests are feminist, queer and Deleuzean theory, representations of girl–girl desire in young adult fiction, and multicultural children’s fiction.     

The Key and the Piano

Ba Sen老师也给我们讲了一个发生在新年的故事: 高高兴兴地看完烟花后,爸爸才想起来房门的钥匙忘在钢琴上了。这个新年的第一晚,我们是在户外度过的。     

Where Is The Key?

It was Saturday. The weather got cold suddenly and Mrs King wanted to buy a 1 for herself. After breakfast Mrs King and her husband started out. There was much ice on the roads and Mr King 2 carefully. He stopped the car in front of the biggest 3 in the     

The Origin of Cultural Gap

文章主要探讨了作为语言文化异质性极致体现形式的文化空缺产生的原因     

The Translation of Proverbs——The management of Cultural Elements

由于不同的自然地理环境、宗教信仰、风俗习惯、寓言神话以及文学艺术诸多方面的差异，英、汉谚语承载着不同的民族文化特色和不同的文化信息。他们与文化传统紧密相连，不可分割。谚语中的文化因素构成了翻译中的困难。直译、意译，或者直译与意译相结合，则要根据具体的语言环境来定。本文试图借助语用学的观点．对英汉谚语的翻译做一些探索。     

The Cultural Significance of the Chinese Practice of Holding a Banquet Following a Funeral

中西文化习俗的比较与变流是外语学习的一个重要方面。本文从我国民间盛行的丧事后吃“豆腐羹饭”这一令西方人感到有趣的习俗出发，介绍和讨论了中国传统观念对“今生”与“来世”的认识及其文化内涵。     

The Research on the System of Examination and Assessment of Academic Teachers Based on the Cultural Reflections

With some reflections on the management culture of higher educational institutions in China, this paper presents that it is not adequate to make analyses of rules and regulations from the mere perspective of institutional economics to get rid of short-term, which can be accounted for on a deeper level by the absence of management culture in the prevailing assessment system of teachers＇ achievements; while the key to reform the system of assessing teachers＇ work is to rebuild cultural conceptions in the management of higher educational institutions.     

Cultural artifact and children’s understanding of the shape of the Earth: The case of Moroccan children

The non-computational brand of cognitivism is based on the premise that performances, including those of children, are generated by mental models or representations, i.e., “internal” resources. The sociocultural approach, on the other hand, regards context, i.e., an “external” resource, as the chief means of elaborating knowledge. The results of empirical research on how Moroccan children develop their understanding of the shape and properties of the Earth highlight some of the limitations not only of the representationalist paradigm but also of the more “radical” socioculturalist approach. They show that, while the sociocultural context does indeed play a vital role in the development of understanding, the latter in turn helps to increase children’s autonomy of mind.     

Examining the implementation of the mathematics strand of the Key Stage 3 Strategy: What are the bases of evaluation?

This article presents findings from a comparative case study examining the implementation of the mathematics strand of the Key Stage 3 Strategy in two contrasting schools—one using setting and whole‐class teaching, the other incorporating mixed‐ability grouping and individualised learning. A number of ‘outcomes’ of implementation are considered, including teachers' and students' experiences, changes in pedagogic practice and students' attainment. Whilst both schools achieved highly in relation to similar schools, higher attainment gains between Key Stage 2 and Key Stage 3 in the school using setting/whole‐class teaching were associated with increasing student disaffection and dependence on teachers. In contrast, the attainment gains at the school using individualised learning were associated with increasing enthusiasm and independence. The mixed picture of outcomes and their complex interconnections suggest that evaluations of implementation resting on attainment‐based outcomes are problematic in terms of longer‐term aims of increasing the proportions of students choosing to study mathematics and developing the skills of independent learning.     

Filling the Pot or Lighting the Fire? Cultural Variations in Conceptions of Pedagogy

This reflective account describes the impact of different cultural conceptions of pedagogy on one person in the course of an academic career. It begins with the experience of pedagogy in a school in Taiwan and the way in which a lack of meaningful connection is overcome by memorising under the strictest discipline. It goes on to describe the culture shock of arriving at an ancient English University, which appears to represent the opposite pole of the pedagogic spectrum, with a failure to provide structured supervision on the grounds that postgraduates are mature. (It suggests also that there are 'microclimates' of pedagogic ethos within cultures and nations, which may be more salient than those between them.) Finally, it moves to assess the European experience on the basis of focus groups discussing different teaching styles, and meets with demands from students both for less discipline and, at the same time, for more, which appears paradoxical. This paradox is explained by the work of Sapochnik who views it in terms of the adolescent need for a well-disciplined and safe pedagogic structure within which they can have room for their experiments in self-realisation.     

Explicitness of the Fuzzy Cultural Connotation of “Canonization of the Gods”

《封神演义》是明朝中叶一部较优秀的神魔小说。作品包含了三教合流互相渗透的文化内涵,其文化内涵具有一定的模糊性。然深究其思想内涵,则其文化内涵的模糊性中,儒家传统的思想,特别是宋明理学是文本中的主导思想。文章试从社会文化基础、作者的文化心理及小说文化本身等层面,对造成这种现象的原因进行分析。     

Interview-One of the Key Methods in Social Research

Interviewing is one of the most common and most powerful research methods in sociology. To provide an overview of interviewing in social research, the preliminaries and some tactics applied in interviewing are illustrated firstly. Secondly, various forms of interviewing employed in social research are analyzed specifically. Finally, the issues of interviewing are critically examined.