Extended Validation of the Korean Version of the Quality of Life Survey

In this study, we examined the factor structure and reliability of the Korean Quality of Life (KQoL) survey and compared the KQoL survey to both the World Health Organization Quality of Life-Brief Version (WHOQOL-BREF) and the Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS). We also assessed associations between KQoL scores and physical activity (PA) participation. Participants were 557 (male = 281, female = 276) healthy Korean adults with ages between 18 and 71 years (M = 33.2, SD = 14.2). Results of confirmatory factor analyses confirmed the 7-subscale model and indicated acceptable values supporting convergent validity (χ² = 1,678.758, df = 443, p < .001, RMSR = .045, RMSEA = .071, TLI = .880, CFI = .892). Correlations of KQoL subscales with similar subscales of WHOQOL-BREF and with SWLS supported concurrent validity. Results confirm that the KQoL survey can assess multidimensional aspects of quality of life (QoL), including spiritual, physical, social, and psychological. KQoL scores were positively related to PA participation, in line with previous research supporting the positive association of PA with QoL.     

Developing Culturally Competent Preservice Teachers

An unfortunate, yet persistent, truth in U.S. public schools is the large achievement gap existing between children from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds and their White, middle-class counterparts. The potential for cultural dissonance between contemporary teachers and their students necessitates that educators must persistently seek culturally responsive practices. Much has been written regarding strategies for culturally responsive pedagogy; therefore, this article moves beyond a review of culturally responsive pedagogy. Rather than providing teacher candidates with more suggestions for culturally responsive teaching activities, the authors provide teacher educators with specific resources for facilitating the development of cultural competence among preservice teachers.     

Tinkering through transition: on ‘doctoring’ as an early-career academic in physical education and sport pedagogy

This article addresses the notion of ‘making it’ as an early-career academic in physical education and sport pedagogy. In it, we draw on the tradition of material semiotics to reflect on our shared journeys from doctoral student to beginning scholar and beyond. By attuning ourselves to the relationality, materiality and precariousness of our experiences, we offer an answer to the question of what it takes to ‘make it’ as an early-career academic by advocating the practice of ‘making do’ or ‘doctoring.’ We develop this argument, first, by describing the narrative methods we used to conduct our inquiry and by explaining the material-semiotic ideas we used to explore the stories it generated. Then, we tell tales of our transitions from higher degree research student to early-career academic, focusing specifically on our ongoing, collective efforts to make do. In our discussion, we explore these narratives and attend to three features of our actions and activities as early-career academics; namely semiotic relationality, material heterogeneity and the precarious processes of heterogeneous engineering through which we sought to make a career in our field. We conclude by encouraging beginning scholars in physical education and sport pedagogy to become sensitive to these aspects of their own agency, and to experiment, experience and tinker together in ways that are attentive, inventive, caring and persistent.     

‘Second death’, or revival of the ‘third world’ in the context of neo‐liberal globalization

Abstract

This paper tries to analyze the historical change in the Third World in its emergent stage, in the authoritarian stage and in the current democratic stage and, thereafter, find a way to revive the Bandung spirit in the current globalization context. I define the Bandung spirit as one of a ‘non‐aligned self‐helped “organization against” the dominant powerful countries’; that is, spirit of ‘anti‐predominance’. This spirit has emerged on the base of such domestic orientation and realities as economic self‐reliance, nationally integrated political regime, convergence of the state and civil society around anti‐colonialism. However, according to intensification of the Cold War confrontation on the international level and its centrifugal influence, the early Third World changed to a ‘new’ authoritarian Third World. The Third World in this stage could be characterized by an exclusive authoritarian political regime, dependent‐developmentalist economic orientation and coercively repressed and mobilized, in the top‐down way, civil society. This authoritarian Third World began to be confronted with a strong struggle from the bottom for democratization. In order for democratization of the Third World to become its true revival in the context of globalization, the following tasks should be considered. First, the democratic Third World should be a great driving force for the institutionalization of the transnational public regulatory mechanism. Second, the democratic Third World countries try to go over a kind of ‘transformed’ dependent development strategy. Third, democratization should go along with recovery of political inclusiveness and openness of the state to civil society’s demands. Thereafter, I tried to construct globalist re‐interpretation of the Bandung, by way of conceptualizing the current globalization as imperial globalization, unlike the imperialist globalization which the historical Bandung wanted to confront. I argue that the Bandung spirit of collective self‐help organizations against the newly emerging dominant order should be revived in this worse imperial globalization context. In addition, I argue that a nationalist resistance is also one component of the multiple resistances in the current imperial globalization.     

Modernising gender,civilising sex: perverse imaginary in the state feminist politics of Liu Yu‐hsiu

Abstract

The gender sexual politics of Liu Yu‐hsiu has been pivotal in the hegemonic ascendancy of Taiwan state feminism in recent years. Through an examination of Liu’s psychoanalytically mediated essays of cultural criticism, this article traces the contour of Liu’s sexual imaginary within the context of 1990s feminist and queer politics. Liu’s modernising project of gender equality, I argue, upholds heterosexual monogamy as a feminist ideal that seeks to purge all the masculine ills, including perversion and promiscuity. Meanwhile, queers and prostitutes come to be figured as the very negativity that must be repressed. Yet, like the Lacanian Real, they impinge on the symbolic order that Liu ordains as they thwart her desire to civilise sex.     

Texts

Made in America: Immigrant Students in Our Public Schools. Laurie Olsen, New York: The New Press, 1997, 276 pages, $25.00 (hardcover), ISBN 1–5658–4400–9, and $14.95 (softcover), ISBN 1–5658–4471–8.

The Power of Their Ideas: Lessons for America From a Small School in Harlem. Deborah Meier, Boston: Beacon Press, 1995, 190 pages, $12.00 (softcover). ISBN 0–8070–3111–9.

Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow: Meeting the Challenge of Our Multicultural America & Beyond. Paul D. Christiansen and Michelle Young, San Francisco: Gaddo Gap Press, 1996, 376 pages, $29.95 (softcover). ISBN 1–8801–9218–7.