多元文化视野下的基础教育课程改革--兼谈多元文化教育的实质

学校中的教师与学生携带着"看不见的行李",导致教师与学生之间、学生各种亚群体之间的文化差异与碰撞。现代学校教育应该成为多元文化教育。"多元文化教育"不等于"跨文化教育",其实质是追求文化平等与社会民主的教育,是文化上的充分个性化的教育。由于基础教育的基本特性、社会主义性质和社会现实以及全国建设小康社会目标的要求,我国的基础教育课程改革应重视多元文化教育,这也是回应世界教育改革大潮的必然要求。     

试论文化渗透与专科英语教学

文化可以渗透到社会和各个领域。随着专科英语教学从传统的词汇、语法、句法为中心的教学向以培养交际能力为目的教学转向，文化渗透也成为专科英语中不可忽视的一个重要环节。教学中只有将语言知识和文化知识联系起来加以传授，才能帮助学生克服文化背景的差异所造成的语言交际障碍。     

Wuwei (non-action) Philosophy and Actions: Rethinking ‘actions’ in school reform

This inquiry aims to enrich conversation regarding school reform. The author asks about what other discourses are possible when the action-oriented question of how to ‘act’ is a major approach to ‘fix’ current educational problems. Drawing from Taoist philosophy of wuwei (non-action), the author provides a frame to review current school reform movement. Political philosophy of wuwei highlights non-interference or non-intervention governance. Laozi discusses his theory of governance that a sage leader should take and explicates the paradox of non-action: By not doing, everything is done. The paradox of wuwei complicates dialogues in the field of curriculum theory by opening spaces for taking effortless actions in the midst of standardization and accountability reform movement.     

Learning About Education's Past: A Good Reference

From a small beginning in the colonial period the City Super-intedency of Schools has grown to its present enormous, complexly integrated proportions by means of numerous forces and many devious meanderings. While the following data refer chiefly to records of Massachusetts, their implications are deemed applicable to the nation as a whole, since many of the present forms of educational ideas and institutions grew out of these movements in the seventeenth and eighteen centuries.     

Religious Influences in Public Education: Political and judicial Developments

What can preservice teachers tell us about the impact of culture on literacy? Participants responded to an open-ended survey asking, “How do you think your culture influences what you read and write?” Three themes emerged in their answers: family influence, self-exploration through literacy, and the cultural politics of literacy. Further examination led to three premises about literacy. Findings highlight the importance of students’ literacy history and provide means for teachers to reframe their instruction, based on student voice.     

Testing Predictive Models of Technology Integration in Mexico and the United States

ABSTRACT

Data from Mexico City, Mexico (N = 978) and from Texas, USA (N = 932) were used to test the predictive validity of the teacher professional development component of the Will, Skill, Tool Model of Technology Integration in a cross-cultural context. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to test the model. Analyses of these data yielded positive results for the model's validity and reliability, with more than 90% of the variance in classroom technology integration found to be attributable to a linear combination of a teacher's attitude or Will, technology proficiency or Skill, and access to technology Tools. Results also showed a differential effect of predictors on integration, depending on the teacher's stage of technology adoption: At lower stages Tool access appears to be the best predictor; whereas, at higher stages Skill appears to be the best predictor. At the highest stage of adoption Will may replace Skill as the best technology integration predictor. Collective findings regarding the orderings of integration predictors shed light on alternative theoretical views of technology integration. Findings tend to support the view of technology integration as a step-wise, sequential, developmental process, rather than the process of eliminating external and internal barriers that impede the full integration of technology into a classroom teaching/learning environment.     

Immersion Learning in Social Work Education: A Pedagogical Tool for Enriching Knowledge and Practice Skills among BSW Students

Immersion learning is one form of experiential education and has great utility in social work education. However, there is limited research on student learning outcomes from immersion learning courses in social work education. This ethnographic research describes an immersion learning course offered to BSW students (N = 9) and the learning outcomes gained. This semester-long course focused on macrolevel practice with people experiencing poverty, homelessness, and the sexual exploitation of women. As part of this course, students went on a weeklong immersion trip, where they visited a dozen human service organizations and interacted with people experiencing poverty and homelessness. Qualitative analysis produced three findings. First, students reported that these interactions helped them realize their biases and impacted their understanding of poverty. Second, students reported enhanced social work practice skills, such as cultural competency, self-awareness, and interpersonal expertise. They also gained a better appreciation for macrolevel practice. Third, students reported a better understanding of how to deploy classroom knowledge in practice and how to apply what they learned back in the classroom. These findings have implications for undergraduate social work education and how immersion learning programs can be a tool for enriching both knowledge and practice skills.     

On the meaning of cross-cultural differences in simple cognitive measures

A set of 5 reaction time tests of increasing cognitive complexity were administered to 35 secondary school pupils in Zimbabwe and The Netherlands at 4 consecutive school days in order to explore the existence and nature of cross-cultural differences on reaction time tests measuring basic cognitive operations. No cross-cultural differences were observed on the simple tests, while the Dutch pupils were faster than Zimbabwean pupils on the more complex tests. Zimbabwean pupils showed larger performance increments at retesting. Two Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC) subtests (Vocabulary and Digit Span Forward and Backward), a tapping test, and parental socioeconomic status were used to predict the cross-cultural performance differences. Socioeconomic status and digit span could explain all these differences. It is argued that the cross-cultural performance differences on elementary cognitive tests cannot be interpreted at face value because of their susceptibility to non-target factors, such as test understanding and previous test exposure.     

Book reviews

Guided by uses and gratifications theory and prior research on cross-cultural adaptation (CCA), this article investigated how loneliness influenced Chinese students’ Internet use and CCA. The results showed that chronically lonely, situationally lonely and non-lonely groups were significantly different in their motives for Internet use. Non-lonely Chinese students were more likely to use the Internet for acculturation and less likely to use it for passing time and companionship than did chronically lonely Chinese students. Moreover, loneliness was a significant negative predictor of both sociocultural adaptation and psychological adaptation. Consistent with previous research on CCA, the findings lent support to the uses and gratifications paradigm which posits that individual differences influence people's motivation for media use. Implications of the results for uses and gratifications and CCA research are discussed.     

关于口译中的文化因素及其影响

口译是一种跨文化的语言交际活动.语言是文化的载体.译员的跨文化意识表现与应用能力,即译员的翻译是否符合文化性,是衡量译员水平的最重要标准之一.