Acculturative challenges among Pakistani secondary school students in Hong Kong

Scholars have extensively studied acculturation from different theoretical perspectives among immigrants across the societies of settlement. However, there is a dearth of knowledge about acculturation from a culture learning approach in Hong Kong. This article reports the acculturative challenges among sixteen (16) Pakistani students from six different secondary schools in Hong Kong. The phenomenographic data analysis of semi-structured interviews revealed four categories of everyday experiences in schools that hinder their acculturation. These are mainly related to inter-ethnic interactions, sensitivity towards diverse learning and sociocultural needs, and the Chinese language teaching curriculum for non-Chinese speaking students. Although the study reports Pakistani students' experiences, the findings may also translate the acculturative challenges among students with an immigrant or ethnic minority background in settlement societies. The article also discusses both the theoretical and practical implications for studying and helping immigrant young people in multicultural contexts.     

Cultural differences in teaching and learning

Teacher and student are an archetypal role pair in virtually any society. When teacher and student come from different cultures, such as in the context of economic development programmes, many perplexities can arise. These can be due to different social positions of teachers and students in the two societies, to differences in the relevance of the curriculum for the two societies, to differences in profiles of cognitive abilities between the populations of the two societies, or to differences in expected teacher/student and student/student interaction. This paper focuses in particular on these interaction differences. It relates them to the author's 4-D model of cultural differences among societies, based on research on work-related values in over 50 countries. Differences in expected teacher/student and student/student interaction are listed with reference to the four dimensions of Individualism versus Collectivism, large versus small Power Distance, strong versus weak Uncertainty Avoidance, and Masculinity versus Femininity. Some effects of language differences between teacher and student are also discussed. The burden of adaptation in cross-cultural learning situations should be primarily on the teachers.     

Culturally and Linguistically Relevant Readalouds

The teacher readaloud is an instructional tool established in its ability to foster children's language and literacy development. Increasing cultural and linguistic diversity and changing standards place pressure on teachers to provide literacy and language instruction relevant to children's everyday lives and learning. This article presents a framework for conducting culturally and linguistically relevant readalouds within two essential components, talk and text, in terms of developing cultural competence, maintaining high academic expectations, and fostering a critical stance. Particular attention is given to the interactive nature of these readalouds and how they can be used to promote children's active co-construction of textually-based meaning.     

Developing Multicultural Awareness,Knowledge, and Skills: Diversity Training Makes a Difference?

As the population becomes more diverse, social work educators will bear a larger responsibility for educating culturally competent practitioners. To enhance student learning, research should consider those factors that influence students' multicultural awareness, knowledge, and skills. This information potentially can help students better prepare for cultural competency courses and improve student outcomes. The focus of this study was to evaluate BSW and MSW students' (N = 191) multicultural awareness, knowledge, and skills at the beginning and end of a required cultural diversity course. The results indicate that more previous diversity trainings at different sites consistently predict higher pre-test scores while previous diversity training sites and pre-test scores predict post-test scores. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of research, practice, and teaching implications.     

Bilingualism in minority settings in Canada: Integration or assimilation?

This study explores social psychological correlates of bilingualism in the Canadian context. First, it investigates the relation between language confidence and identity as moderated by ethnolinguistic vitality. Second, it examines whether bilinguals can be distinguished from predominantly unilingual participants on subjective vitality and language usage and evaluates the impact of ethnolinguistic vitality on these differences. Data from Statistics Canada collected among minority Francophones outside of Quebec and minority Anglophones in Quebec (N = 7377) were used for analysis. The results show that language confidence is significantly related to levels of identity for all regions. Bilinguals are significantly distinct from predominantly monolingual participants on most factors for maintenance of identity. However, among all Francophone samples, bilinguals most resemble the French-dominant participants.     

The Teacher From the Black Lagoon: Revenge of the Bad Teacher

School teachers have been used as heroic characters in movies for a long time. Their heroism compensates for the failures of social life in our society by treating problems in the classroom, not the real world, and by acting as the mediators between diverse sub-cultures and the larger society. They are the agents of rationality, scholarship, and inclusiveness in addressing great social issues. In recent years, many movies about bad workers have appeared, including comedies and melodramas. Bad Teacher is a new kind of movie that treats the usually heroic teacher as a kind of bad worker. The critique of the teacher comes at a time when school teachers are being demonized in political discourse, and it makes use of disparaging stereotypes for dramatic effect.     

Reflections on Diversity—a Personal Journey

This is a reflection on my life experience as a woman of color. I teach Spanish courses as well as teacher preparation courses. I know what it was like to grow up in a nearly all Black community, then move to one which was almost exclusively White. As an adult looking back on my childhood, I believe that it is especially important that culturally and linguistically diverse teachers are present in schools. As a professor, I see few teachers of color in foreign language courses at the university level as well as the P–12 levels. P–16 institutions boast of being more receptive to culturally and linguistically diverse students. Role models are important for all children. However, there are few positive role models for culturally and linguistically diverse children. If the goal is to get culturally and linguistically diverse children to succeed academically, then positive and diverse role models are needed in U.S. classrooms.     

Getting Out of their Comfort Zone: Examining Teacher Candidates' Reactions to Service-Learning Abroad

This study presents data gathered from a service-learning trip to Costa Rica designed for teacher candidates. Data include participant responses to writing prompts, field notes, and follow-up questionnaires. Results show that participants' experience with the language barrier raised their empathy toward English learners. However, participants expressed dissonance regarding student behavioral norms.     

Introducing Multicultural Education to the Digital Age: A Review of Culture,Difference, & Power

Teacher candidates must metaphorically "step out of their own skins," challenging stereotypical cultural metanarratives, to teach effectively. This study describes results of collegian mentoring 1stthrough 12th-grade students representing diverse ethnic and/or socioeconomic status groups in conjunction with a sophomore-level course on diversity taught at a university in the Northwest area with less than 10% ethically diverse populations. Analysis of surveys administered to participants, comments, and participant observations showed that some students developed more understandings of diversity than others by semester's closing. Discussion of the results and recommendations for integration of diversity throughout the teacher education curricula are presented.     

Teachers Initiating Conversations About Race and Racism in a High School Class

This qualitative study explores the techniques, materials and processes of a Black teacher and a White teacher who introduced issues of race and racism in their team-taught high school class. The teachers explicitly put the issues of race and racism on the table, asked questions that challenged students to think about the topics, and used race-related curricular materials and assignments. The teachers' initiative encouraged the students in the class to speak out about the language and meaning of race and racism.     

Minding the gap: Elucidating the disconnect between arts participation metrics and arts engagement within immigrant communities

A growing gap between national metrics of arts participation and the many, evolving ways in which people participate in artistic and aesthetic activities limits the degree to which such data can usefully inform policy decisions. The National Endowment for the Arts’ Survey of Public Participation in the Arts (SPPA) is the primary source of arts participation data in the USA, but this instrument inadequately evaluates how members of minority and immigrant communities participate in the arts. As the USA nears a historic demographic shift to being a majority–minority nation – non-Hispanic White individuals will no longer be a demographic majority by about 2041 – obtaining more accurate measures of artistic activities that are meaningful to a more diverse population will be of increasing importance for public policy-making. To better understand the extent to which the SPPA's questions capture the range of artistic activities engaged in by members of immigrant communities, we cognitively tested a subset of the survey's questions with Chinese immigrants to the USA as a pilot case. We found that interviewees participate in a range of culturally specific and non-culturally specific arts activities that they did not report in response to the survey's questions. In this article, we draw upon these interviews to discuss the reasons underpinning the gap and suggest implications for updating research tools and future research. A better understanding of the gap between measured and actual “arts participation” will lead to improved measures and information to support artistic expression and arts more reflective of contemporary society.     

Wrestling Whiteness: Three Stages of Shifting Multicultural Perspectives among White Pre-service Teachers

Pedagogical progress in the field of multicultural education moves at a snail's pace due to pre-service teachers' level of acceptance of multiculturalism and its tenets. Teacher candidates and seasoned teachers are simply unconscious and apathetic about matters of diversity. Pre-service teachers, primarily White and middle class, are mandated to take multicultural courses and grapple with recognizing their own cultural beings and the cultural realities of others. While student populations grow more diverse, the pre-service teacher population is becoming more homogenous. A major obstacle in teacher preparation programs arising from this mismatch of teacher and student cultures is the ability to facilitate a critical consciousness. This includes the ability to analyze the world and employ equity pedagogy in pre-service teachers who are resistant to diversity issues.

Pre- and post-course surveys, in open-ended and anonymous narrative form, were administered to White pre-service teachers (= 94), and this article is divided into two sections based on the results. First, I outline the three shifting perspectives that were identified during a semester-long course with White and middle class pre-service students, and then connect these perspectives to existing research on racial identity ego, theorizing whiteness, and curriculum integration. This new theoretical model addresses equity pedagogy and is framed within whiteness and consciousness studies and may serve as a reflective tool for educators to self-evaluate their pedagogical proclivities. Second, the implications of this informal action research project for White pre-service educators and research in theorizing whiteness are developed.     

Developing Teaching-Specific Spanish Competencies in Bilingual Teacher Education: Toward a Culturally,Linguistically, and Professionally Relevant Approach

The emergence of K-12 bilingual/dual-language schools¹¹ Although we recognize the distinction between “dynamic” forms of bilingualism characteristic of bilingual education programs and “compartmentalized” forms generally characteristic of “dual-language” programs (García, 2014), in this article we employ the term “bilingual/dual-language education” to include both programmatic approaches and to reclaim the term “bilingual.”View all notes in the United States require bilingual teacher education programs across the nation continue to “build on the language strengths”²² See Zentella (2005).View all notes of bilingual teacher candidates and provide them with ample opportunities to acquire the language competencies needed for teaching content-area knowledge across the bilingual curriculum. Although the need to prepare linguistically qualified bilingual/dual-language teachers is relevant to all language programs comprising the bilingual teacher education field, in this article the authors describe a culturally, linguistically, and professionally relevant approach for developing the teaching-specific Spanish language competencies of future bilingual teachers. Educating the new generation of linguistically qualified bilingual educators calls for an engaged and responsive pedagogy that will prepare teachers to orchestrate K-12 teaching and learning experiences where languages (Spanish, in this particular case) function as multidimensional bodies encompassing and empowering the cultures and funds of knowledge teachers and students bring to the classroom.     

Participatory Deep Learning in a Diverse Class on Minority Literatures

This paper is a reflexive exploration of my teaching and evaluation techniques in a diverse class on minority literature. I explain my classroom evaluation and teaching techniques in offering an African literature course as a junior African professor trained outside the United States and teaching in a predominantly white institution. Using Paulo Freire, bell hooks, and Greg Light, Roy Cox, and Susanna Calkins, I assess my effectiveness as a student-centered teacher, pointing out my shortcomings and suggesting ways in which I will overcome these obstacles in future courses.     

Using Photographs to Assess Equity Climate: A Taxonomy

Our challenge as teachers and as human beings is to begin the process of "changing our voices," facing who we are and what that means in a society based on power and oppression. We must learn to listen to others, so we can speak together with voices both united and unique. The journey described is personal, yet it is also generalizable. Changing one's voice may be the only real way in which a teacher can be a model of diversity and multiculturalism. If as a teacher I do nothing to change my own voice, I have accomplished little in terms of effective teaching. My attitudes, behaviors, words should reflect and embody humanity, not just those who "look" like me or are thought of as more capable learners. I must challenge my students' thinking in terms of diversity and multicultural issues and push them to think of the "other."     

Multicultural literature: An essay

Effective teacher education should guide preservice and practicing teachers in comprehending and facilitating educational concepts and pedagogical practices that examine and promote equity for all learners. Teachers and young learners benefit from sundry opportunities to recognize their self identities and to celebrate both individual and shared cultural characteristics while increasing their understanding and appreciation of others and society. Teachers' cultural characteristics frequently do not match the cultural characteristics reflective of their young learners, and teachers may not be cognizant that their young learners do not see and operate in the world as they do. Critical pedagogy frequently fails to occur when dissonance lies between teachers' backgrounds, beliefs, and behaviors and those characterizing their young learners. Therefore, a major responsibility of pre-K-12 school administrators and teacher educators focuses on developing cultural self-awareness in teachers concomitantly empowering them to develop cultural self-awareness in their young learners. This article addresses how to initiate and further enhance the development of cultural self-awareness in educators by viewing a short yet provocative video titled, "The Lunch Date." A synthesis of university class discussion techniques drawing on the experiences of two professors provides guiding questions and useful suggestions appropriate for pre-K-12 teachers, administrators, staff developers, and teacher educators.     

Community Consultation in Developing Museum Projects: A Case Study Using the Repertory Grid Technique

Good community consultation is a powerful tool in developing new museum projects and exhibitions, facilitating a more effective delivery of service to a diverse public. Existing techniques for both user and community consultation are limited with front end evaluation particularly undeveloped in the sector, often providing no meaningful base by which to compare project outcomes. Tension exists between government, which values quantitative data, and researchers who argue qualitative methods are more appropriate for evaluating community projects. This article reports a pilot study using the repertory grid technique to examine a ‘socially excluded’, ethnically diverse local community's perceptions, expectations and previous experiences of similar projects, to provide a benchmark against which to compare outcomes. This research formed part of the front end evaluation for a New Deal for Community's Project run by Sheffield Galleries and Museums Trust. The repertory grid technique was developed in psychological studies as a means of understanding respondents' own world views, and is particularly helpful in working with people with poor language skills. Although this study only used the technique qualitatively, it can be used to combine both quantitative and qualitative data, providing more robust data for evidence-based policy decisions. Using the repertory grid technique, respondents were able to list both perceived and practical barriers to participation in projects. The technique also enabled them to articulate what would motivate them to become involved in future projects. The repertory grid technique has significant potential for use in community consultation and project evaluation as a means of understanding local residents' perceptions and its visual representation means that its findings can be easily understood by participants, policy-makers and practitioners.     

The role of communication content in an ethnically diverse organization

A research on the content of communication at work, job attitudes and unequal treatment was conducted in an ethnically diverse organization in the Netherlands comprising 504 ethnic majority and 113 ethnic minority employees. Ethnic minority employees experienced less person-related communication at work and perceived higher levels of unequal treatment of minorities than ethnic majority employees. However, compared to their ethnic majority colleagues, ethnic minority employees reported higher levels of work-related communication and more positive attitudes towards their job. Regression analyses revealed significant relations between communication content and employees’ job attitudes, with positive relations between both role-related and person-related communication and job satisfaction and positive relations between both organization-related and role-related communication and organizational identification.     

Disrupting Whitestream Measures of Quality Teaching: The Community Cultural Wealth of Teachers of Color

Discussions of teacher preparation, qualifications, and effectiveness are at the heart of increasing attacks on public education. In this article, we contribute to the growing body of literature that works to challenge the narrowing parameters of what is considered effective teacher pedagogy, particularly as it relates to the noted value of teachers of color. We argue that racial justice-oriented teachers of color—teachers who recognize structural racial inequities and strive for transformation—provide important, yet invisible labor in our nation's schools. Using a community cultural wealth (CCW) framework, we illuminate multiple strengths and contributions that racial justice-oriented teachers of color bring to the profession that go largely unnoticed by whitestream—Eurocentrism as a norm—measures of teacher quality. In an analysis of data from interviews, digital narratives, and questionnaires, we present counter-narratives—oppositional stories told from the vantage point of the oppressed—of women of color educators to show how their positionalities as teachers of color, community members, and activists, provide insights to the experiences and needs of students that often go unrecognized. This research expands our understanding of overlooked pedagogical characteristics that are foundational to serving students of color and should be incorporated into the way we prepare teachers and the educational administrators who evaluate them.     

Exploring Names and Identity Through Multicultural Literature in K-8 Classrooms

Children's names reflect their gender, culture, religion, language, and family history. Use of students' personal names has the power to positively affirm identity and signal belonging within the classroom and school community. However, naming practices also have the power to exclude, stereotype, or disadvantage students. For many students from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds, their names can be a source of cultural conflict and a watershed for issues of identity and belonging within the school setting. Through multicultural explorations of students' names, educators can affirm students' cultures and identities, and draw upon these as resources to support learning and development from early childhood through the adolescent years. The purpose of this article is to (a) discuss the importance of a person's name to cultural identity, (b) describe strategies to build multicultural communities in K-8 classrooms through exploration of students' names, and (c) suggest multicultural children's literature and curricular activities to teach about the importance of personal names, and develop cross-cultural understandings.