‘Experimental’ secondary modern education in Britain, 1948–1958

Studies of mid-twentieth century education in England and Wales have conventionally hinged on the 1944 Education Act, foregrounding policy over practice. This article considers the significance of the inter-war progressive educational movement for postwar educational developments. It presents a case study of one teacher who was active in the early ‘experimental’ years of secondary modern education, suggesting that this period was important in the making of ‘modern’ education. It seeks to complicate both negative and positive readings of ‘meritocracy’ in postwar educational history. This article also highlights the paucity of available source material for the study of the secondary modern school, arguing that attention should be paid to well-documented cases, placed in context.     

Negotiations of cultural identities by Indian women engineering students in US engineering programmes

The paper analyses the identities of Indian women engineers in the gendered organizational context of US engineering programmes. Participant narratives discuss the ways in which women are subjected to identity struggles in India due to gendered patrifocal norms that impose structural, societal, and familial pressures on women. Subsequently, when these women enter US engineering programmes, they encounter a highly masculine organizational and cultural space. Participants discuss identity dislocations, transformations, and assimilation as they seek to meld into the existing structures and find a career trajectory. I draw upon liminality theory to explore the cultural transitions, identity restructuring, and negotiations of Indian women engineers, navigating the intersections of competing and intersecting cultural norms of gender and engineering in India and the US, work, and family. The findings indicate the layers of gendered ideology that constitute engineering education in India and the US, the societal pressures of marriage and family rooted in patrifocal Indian norms, the barriers to finding an engineering job, the resources within the structures that support women, and the identification of patriarchy as the enactment of agency and as a site for change.     

English Proficiency,Identity, Anxiety,and Intergroup Attitudes: US Americans’ Perceptions of Chinese

Guided by the Common Ingroup Identity Model and Berry’s acculturation framework, this study examined the roles that perceptions of language proficiency, cultural identity, and communication anxiety had on intergroup attitudes and stereotypes in the American–Chinese contact context. Serial mediation analyses with 10,000 bootstrap samples revealed that perceived English proficiency of a Chinese contact had significant indirect effects on affective and behavioral attitudes toward Chinese through American participants’ perceptions of their contact’s host and home culture identification and communication anxiety. Perceived English proficiency had an indirect effect only on positive stereotypes through the Chinese contact’s perceived identification with home culture.     

National identity in a divided nation: South Koreans’ attitudes toward North Korean defectors and the reunification of two Koreas

This paper examines how national identity is associated with South Koreans’ attitudes toward North Korean defectors and their opinions on the relationship between two Koreas. Using a nationally representative survey, we find that individuals high on ethnic identity are more likely to harbor negative attitudes toward migrants from North Korea and less likely to believe that the reunification between two Koreas is necessary. The findings suggest that alleged common belief in “one nation, two countries” notwithstanding, political division has led South Koreans to regard North Korean citizens as an out-group, who are not clearly distinguishable from non-coethnic immigrants.     

Help that hurts? Perceptions of intergroup assistance

The current research, guided theoretically by the Intergroup Helping as Status Relations Model, explored how high and low status groups (Israeli Jews and Israeli Arabs) perceive offers of help from the high to the low status group. Ninety-three Arab and Jewish participants were asked to imagine and evaluate offers of help from Jews to Arabs in Israel. Consistent with the hypothesis that members of high and low status groups would have different perspectives and goals in their relations, Israeli Arabs viewed help by Israeli Jews more as a way to reinforce existing hierarchy and as a way of asserting the higher groups’ domination. Recognizing the different orientations of members of high and low status groups to potentially conciliatory actions, such as helping behavior, can enhance understanding of the dynamics of intergroup relations and conflict and reveal factors that might fuel intergroup misunderstandings and tensions, which can represent a critical step to improving intergroup relations.     

族群建构与国家认同

本文以西方学者安德森(B.Anderson)的民族观为参照平台,通过展示前辈学者对"族群"概念的丰富多彩的解说,指出了族群建构的学理依据和实践价值,揭示了学术意义上的族群建构与具有政治意义的国家认同这二者之间的内在必然关联,强调了将它们并置关联在一起的现实意义,进而初步彰显了学术研究中固有的"政治倾向性",阐明了在学术研究中要树立"国家利益高于一切"思想的重要性.     

Understandings of national identity and outgroup attitudes in culturally diverse Mauritius

This study investigated understandings of national group belonging in relation to attitudes toward foreign and established outgroups in Mauritius. Representative data were collected among the three numerically largest ethno-cultural groups (Hindus, Muslims, and Creoles; N_total = 1770) and results confirmed a distinction between “being,” “doing,” and “feeling” Mauritian among all three groups, with some small differences for Creoles compared to Hindus and Muslims. Furthermore, “being” Mauritian was not significantly related to attitudes toward established and foreign outgroups. In contrast, the “doing” understanding was negatively associated with both attitudes, and the “feeling” understanding showed positive associations with both outgroup attitudes among all three participant groups. The findings make a novel contribution to the literature on how people understand national identity, how these understandings differ between ethno-cultural groups within a nation, and how these relate to attitudes toward foreign as well as established outgroups.     

What it means to be “one of us”: Discourses of national identity in the United States

In recent years, the transnational movement of people has resulted in increasing tension and debates about national identity. The present research utilized a discourse analytic approach to examine accounts of national identity in the U.S. among native-born U.S. residents, Mexicans living in Mexico, and Mexicans living in the U.S. Our analysis focused on two sets of diverging accounts of national identity. A first set involved participants' explanations of national identity as natural/essential, “felt”, or conditional, which served to either constrain how “American” immigrants could be or allowed for a more inclusive definition of national identity. A second set of accounts involved participants theorizing the national polity as a multicultural or monocultural space which functioned to construct national boundaries as permeable or reinforced (White) American dominance. These patterns of talk emerged across all interviews, although U.S. participants attended to more flexible and dilemmatic (e.g. inclusionary and exclusionary) accounts of national identity. We discuss the implications for the complexity of national identity.     

The benefits of ethnic activity group participation on older immigrant well-being and host country adjustment

Drawing on acculturation and social identity literatures, the present research extends on initial work on social group connectedness among older immigrants to examine in a quasi-experimental study the well-being benefits of participating in heritage culture groups. Older immigrant clients (N = 66) of six aged-care agencies in Australia were given diary booklets in which to complete a set of measures on selected days when they did or did not attend the agencies’ heritage culture group activities, over a 2-month period. Results showed that heritage group participation reduced loneliness and increased well-being. Future research should replicate and extend these findings to assist our understanding of how heritage culture group participation aids first-generation older immigrants with aging successfully in a foreign land.     

体育专业大学生课堂学习体验与反思

运用文献资料法、调查法、访谈法和统计法等,对体育专业大学生课堂学习体验进行调查分析。结果显示,较非体育生,体育生专业认同感较强,学校认同感较高,学习目标设置比例较高而计划实施水平不高,体育生与非体育生均以外生学习动机为主,学习投入水平不高且学习问题较多;对于当前的教学形式与方法、教学内容、教师、作业、成绩评价和奖学金评定也都有新的要求。提出,课堂教学需在内容、方法、形式上进行改革,增强教学的互动性,教学内容尽量满足学生求知需求,教师要多关心关注学生,布置作业要兼顾难度和趣味性,注重教师魅力塑造,建立形成性学习评价为主的成绩评价体系及多元化的奖学金评定体系,为推动大学体育专业教学改革提供参考。