College integration and social class

Higher Education - What is the impact of social class on college integration? Higher education institutions are becoming more diverse, yet the integration of underprivileged students remains a...     

UTILITY OF THE STANFORD–BINET INTELLIGENCE SCALES,FIFTH EDITION,WITH ETHNICALLY DIVERSE PRESCHOOLERS

Current research on the use of revisions of intelligence measures with ethnically diverse populations and younger children is limited. The present study investigated the utility of the Stanford–Binet Intelligence Scales, Fifth Edition (SB5), with an ethnically diverse preschool sample. African American and Caucasian preschoolers, matched on age, gender, and parental education, were found to have similar patterns of high and low scores on both the composites and all subtests of the SB5. The present study also found that African American and Caucasian preschool children did not differ on overall cognitive ability as measured by the SB5 Full Scale IQ. Implications and suggestions for further research are discussed.     

Cultural values at the individual level and the malleability of ways of knowing

This research tested the relationship between individuals cultural values and the malleability in their ways of knowing in two social contexts. Two hundred and ninety-two college students majoring in either business or social sciences initially received two priming conditions (two weeks apart) where they reflected on either their in-group or their out-group. Then, their adherences to ways of knowing: separate knowing (SK, being a devil’s advocate) and connected knowing (CK, being perspective taker) and cultural values: collectivist-horizontal, collectivist-vertical, individualist-horizontal and individualist-vertical were assessed. Analyses revealed a priming condition X ways of knowing X cultural values interaction. When students had their in-group in mind, their CK score was significantly higher than their SK score in all cultural categories. When students had their out-group in mind, their CK scores decreased to comparable levels of their SK score in all cultural values except horizontal-collectivist. Students with a dominant collectivist-horizontal values maintained higher CK scores compared with their SK scores in the out-group condition. Implications for perspective-taking and critical thinking are discussed.     

HIP HOP for HIV awareness: using hip hop culture to promote community-level HIV prevention

The goal of this paper was to determine the effectiveness of the HIP HOP for HIV Awareness intervention, an innovative model utilising an exchange of an HIV test for a hip hop concert ticket, in a metropolitan city among African American youth and young adults. A subset of intervention participants participated in standardised testing, sex education and pre/post test administration. Data were analysed to identify changes in knowledge and attitudes with respect to HIV and sexually transmitted infections pre/post the educational session. An analysis of knowledge revealed variance in the pre- and post-assessment findings among participants receiving the intervention. Level of education and gender significantly influenced the variance in knowledge discerned from the pre- and post-assessment among participants. Two three-level significant interactions emerged from the analysis of variance: knowledge, education and gender; and knowledge, education and race/ethnicity. Programme findings suggest that an increase in knowledge and improved self-perceptions related to attitudes are the result of a brief, HIV-focused community-based intervention among young adults.     

Teachers’ intercultural competence: a requirement or an option in a culturally diverse classroom?

This paper reports an exploratory study of the development of intercultural competence (IC) in elementary school teachers in Catalonia, Spain, utilising mixed-method quantitative and qualitative assessments. Through enrolment in a teacher training activity, the starting point was the administration of the Intercultural development inventory (IDI) to assess IC. Later, a discussion group was held to reflect on the results of the evaluation and to discuss educational practices in the face of cultural diversity. The quantitative IDI findings indicated that, regardless of the presence of foreign origin students at schools, participant teachers overestimate their level of intercultural sensitivity; there is a tendency to emphasise similarities in all cultures, which can minimise significant cultural differences. Nevertheless, the teachers became interested in cultural diversity after considering their potentially controversial and problematic educational context. Beyond admitted limitations of this study, inherent to small-scale methodological approach, our practice-based reflective proposal highlights obstacles and potentialities for managing cultural diversity in the classroom. These findings support the conclusion that IC is distributed throughout members of a community rather than being strictly an individual attribute. At the same time, the study thus demonstrates a mixed-method training design as an effective means of developing and assessing IC.