Selective Exposure to Cable News and Immigration in the U.S.: The Relationship Between FOX News,CNN, and Attitudes Toward Mexican Immigrants

In the past 2 decades, cable television and the Internet have greatly increased the availability of media content. The phenomenon has reinvigorated a longstanding debate about the effects of this media landscape, as people selectively get exposed to specific content. Based on U.S. national survey data, this article advances research in this area by analyzing the interplay between individuals' ideological predispositions, their selective exposure to cable news, and the relationship between selective exposure and their attitudes toward an issue with key policy-making implications: Mexican immigration. Results indicate conservative Republicans are more likely to watch FOX News, which is associated with negative perceptions of Mexican immigrants and higher support for restrictive immigration policies. Findings also suggest that liberals who get exposed to FOX News also show less support for Mexican immigration.     

Stichwort: Mehrsprachigkeit

The article provides an introduction to the state of the art in research on migration induced multilingualism. At first, recent research on the dynamics of migration is taken up, showing that practices and types of migration have changed dramatically in the past two decades. These changes lead to linguistic textures in societies that go beyond all forms of complexity ever experienced before. The theoretical concept of super-diversity tries to capture the new types of complexity. It is presented in the first chapter of this article. Actual super-diversity in migration areas is confronted with traditional self-concepts of homogeneity and monolingualism as the regular case in societies, in chapter two. A historical analysis in chapter three illustrates the development of the linguistic self-image of classical, i.e. European nation states. This concept of linguistic normality—a monolingual habitus—sets the frame not only for actual language practice and language policies in many nation states world-wide, but has also influenced important parts of scientific research and discourse on multilingualism. Chapters four and five deal with the state of knowledge concerning language development in multilingual contexts, and present the controversy about bilingual education. In the final chapter, perspectives for future research on multilingualism and education are presented that take linguistic super-diversity into account.     

Stichwort: Vom Ehrenamt zum zivilgesellschaftlichen Engagement

In the context of various societal developments, civic involvement is receiving more and more attention from politics, science and society in general. Recently, the area of education has been looking to civic engagement because of the potential and capabilities expected of it. Research into civic engagement has made remarkable progress. The diverse studies give an elaborate picture of scope, direction and the development of this type of civic involvement. At the same time, it is clear that significant gaps and deficits in respect of knowledge and data exist. A systematic, theoretically and empirically founded body of research, which is interdisciplinary and integrates different strands of research, does not yet exist. The task remains of developing theoretical and empirical in-depth research. This research must integrate some areas of engagement which have been largely neglected until now and pay attention to the limits in the capabilities of such civic commitment.     

Sprachdiagnostische Grundlagen für die Förderung bildungssprachlicher Fähigkeiten

The present article takes up the discussion about the interrelatedness of linguistic proficiency and educational achievement among children learning German as a second language. We provide an overview of diagnostic procedures for linguistic needs analysis, which were developed in the context of the German research program ‘FÖRMIG’. Linguistic features of school-based registers as well as the cognitive representation of academic language proficiency among bilinguals will first be addressed as the most relevant dimensions in the assessment of academic language proficiency. Finally, based on the concept of linguistic core-proficiencies after Ehlich, each of the four procedures is characterized with reference to its particular scope of identifiable aspects of academic language proficiency. Thereby it becomes evident that the procedures reflect age-specific language demands of school: Whereas the focus of assessment is first located on central aspects of grammatical and lexical knowledge as fundamental premises of schooling, the field of attention—with increasing age of the children—shifts more and more towards performance in technical language and certain text-types indicating academic language proficiency.     

Sprachförderkompetenz pädagogischer Fachkräfte

This paper introduces the basics of a (psycho)linguistically-oriented model of language-training competences of educators in pre-school and elementary education. It specifies competence criteria for language intervention based on psycholinguistic research. Ultimately, these criteria will be useful for grounding the additional training of educators and for certifying competences in early language intervention.     

Beteiligung an informellem Lernen

In this article participation in job-related informal learning activities is analyzed based on data from the German ‘Berichtssystem Weiterbildung’ 2003, a national monitoring survey of continuing education and training activities in Germany. Job-related informal learning activities are expected to gain in importance; however, rather heterogeneous definitions of such informal learning activities exist. Based on factor analyses we distinguish between four different forms of informal learning activities. The probability of attendance for those distinguished forms of informal learning activities is then estimated comparatively using logistic regression analysis. Socio-demographic and company-related parameters are included as independent variables. The results show diverse influencing factors for the different informal learning activities which underlines the relevance of a distinctive differentiation of job-related informal learning activities. Further, the results indicate that different forms of job-related informal learning activities are determined by specific combinations of both company-related parameters and socio-demographic characteristics which appear to provide different opportunities for job-related informal learning activities.     

Conveying a Stance of Religious Pluralism in Children’s Literature

Religious discrimination is a global concern, as social dissonance and devastating violence result from religious intolerance. In order to develop socially competent, global citizens and create a peaceful society, religious diversity must be explored in public school classrooms; yet it remains a controversial and seldom addressed topic. Children’s literature that conveys religious pluralism can help teachers start this crucial conversation. A content analysis of 14 religiously pluralistic texts was conducted to understand how children’s authors enact a pluralistic stance. Findings indicate that fiction authors employ five main archetypes to express messages of religious pluralism: the questioner, one truth believer, counterpoint character, atheist, and coach. Both fiction and nonfiction authors confront issues of religiously disguised violence, provide educational information about religious beliefs and practices, emphasize commonalities between religions, maintain an assertive and respectful voice when describing religious beliefs, and highlight the existence of multiple spiritual paths. Implications of these findings for classroom practice are discussed.