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Cultural Context

• Altar-ing Family Communication: The Shrine/Altar Project in the Family Communication Course
  This paper describes an assignment originally designed for a course in family communication now being taught at the upper undergraduate level at a state university in the southwestern United States. The shrine, the project/assignment described in the paper, combines locally relevant cultural traditions which are broadly applicable with course concepts such as defining families; family stories and meaning making; family themes; rituals and traditions; family rules and roles, and so forth.
• Asking the Right Questions: Helping Mainstream Students Understand Other Cultures
  Two common tendencies that lead many mainstream students to misinterpret other cultures are the combative response and the exoticizing response. These misinterpretations, however, can be excellent learning moments for helping students understand the constructed nature of culture and the contextual nature of learning.
• Background Knowledge, Linguistic Complexity, and Second-Language Reading Comprehension
  Examines the role of cultural background knowledge on the reading comprehension of third graders acquiring literacy in Dutch as a first and second language while reading noncontrived texts from the reading curricula. Finds a facilitating effect of cultural familiarity for both reading comprehension and reading efficiency.
• Building Bridges: A Peace Corps Classroom Guide to Cross-Cultural Understanding.
  Understanding the concept of culture helps people live with others of different backgrounds within the classroom, the local community, and the worldwide scale of political, social, and economic interaction. The lessons presented in this book help students begin to more fully understand their own culture and how it has shaped them; to understand the perspectives of other cultures; and to provide an increased awareness of the value and practicality of social service within and beyond the bounds of schools.
• Building Cross-Cultural Bridges--Cultural Analysis of Critical Incidents
  Culture forms the basis for cross-cultural awareness and understanding. The initial response to a new culture is to find it fascinating, exotic, and thrilling.
• Christianity in Public Schools: Perspective of a Non-Christian Immigrant Parent
  Presents the dilemma of infusion of Christian ideology in public education faced by ethnic-immigrant families. Explores three factors challenging the validity of non-Christian beliefs and disfavoring bicultural and bilingual socialization of ethnic children: family structure and religiosity, community orthodoxy, and Christian education in public schools.
• Community College Humanities Review, 1999
  This special issue of the Community College Humanities Review contains articles generated by National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institutes, held over several years. The institutes provided opportunities for academics from a variety of humanities disciplines and types of institutions to interact over an extended period of common study of topics associated with the encounters of European and indigenous cultures in the New World.
• Community College Humanities Review, 1999
  This special issue of the Community College Humanities Review contains articles generated by National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institutes, held over several years.
• Education for Democracy: Contexts, Curricula, Assessments. Research in Social Education
  Liberal democracies depend on the knowledge, character, and imagination of their citizens. Three assumptions underlie this collection of essays on democracy and education: (1) democracy is morally superior to autocracy, whether religious or secular, utopian or mundane; (2) democracies are rare historically and inherently fragile; and (3) there can be no democracy without democrats.
• Finding a Path to History and Culture
  Maintains that music technology growth can assist teachers in implementing interdisciplinary approaches involving history, culture, and music. Presents suggested classroom strategies utilizing CD-ROMs and other interactive media technology.
• Images of the Third World: Teaching a Geography of the Third World
  Profiles an undergraduate college class that critically examines newspaper, map, and poster representations of the developing nations. Beginning exercises reveal how a person's gender, race, and background influence his or her construction and interpretation of cultural images.
• Mixing It Up: Multicultural Support and the Learning Center
  Reports on Macalester College's (Minnesota) Learning Center peer-mentoring, speaker, and workshop programs, which were designed to focus on anti-racism activism and reorganization of multicultural affairs. Analyzes ambiguity of terms "racism" and "multiculturalism" and argues that a systematic approach is necessary to move toward realizing the vision of a vibrant multicultural and multiracial learning community.
• Multicultural Education: Common Problems Experienced by Various Cultures
  The United States today is a pluralistic society, and a multicultural curriculum is a necessary component of the overall school curriculum. Multicultural education should address the culturally and the linguistically diverse student.
• Promoting Multicultural Education through Creative Writing: Crossing Cultures and Genders
  A multicultural literature course at Loyola Marymount University (California) was designed to complicate ideas of culture with gender issues and explored a common but largely unexplored phenomenon--writers who write outside their own personal backgrounds and identities.
• Research on Multiculturalism Applied to Students' Learning School Science: Some Theoretical Issues
  This paper reviews research with a focus on looking at the differences between research taken on by those who see themselves primarily as science educators/science education researchers, and those who conduct research on science education from the perspective of a particular discipline such as psychology or sociology.
• Sharing Stories and Conversation: Teaching Culture(s) in a College Literature Class
  An overriding concern in the teaching of literature from cultures other than the instructor's own is how to go about selecting appropriate literature. When selecting course texts, the question should be whether literary scholars write respectfully about the work.
• State Politics, Students, Administrators, and Faculty: Teaching American Studies in Idaho
  A professor who teaches an American Studies course at the University of Idaho contends that she has her work cut out for her. According to the professor, Idaho's conservative political climate has led to her learning to negotiate.
• State Politics, Students, Administrators, and Faculty: Teaching American Studies in Idaho
  A professor who teaches an American Studies course at the University of Idaho contends that she has her work cut out for her. According to the professor, Idaho's conservative political climate has led to her learning to negotiate.
• Tapestries: Exploring Identity and Culture in the Classroom
  This guide, for grades 6 and above, helps students experience culture and cultural diversity through projects and discussion and reflection activities as an alternative to reading. Students become aware of individual cultural identities including their strengths and weaknesses.
• Teaching and Testimony: Rigoberta Menchu and the North American Classroom
  The articles collected in this book use the testimonial narrative of Rigoberta Menchu, a Mayan-Quiche of Guatemala and winner of the 1992 Nobel Peace Prize, to engage students in vital and relevant cross-cultural learning in a variety of disciplines, locations, and levels. The book tells teachers' stories of using Menchu's testimonial in their classrooms, and invites reflection on the transformative possibility of integrating previously marginalized voices.
• Teaching and Testimony: Rigoberta Menchu and the North American Classroom
  The articles collected in this book use the testimonial narrative of Rigoberta Menchu, a Mayan-Quiche of Guatemala and winner of the 1992 Nobel Peace Prize, to engage students in vital and relevant cross-cultural learning in a variety of disciplines, locations, and levels.
• The Moccasin on the Other Foot Dilemma: Multicultural Strategies at a Historically Black College
  This study used participant observation, student interviews, reflective journals, and discussions with faculty members and administrators to examine multicultural aspects at an historically black college.
• What Is Good Multicultural Children's Literature and How Do We Critique It? Distinguishing between Image and Value
  Multicultural literature is one good way to raise children's awareness of diversity, but how does one decide what constitutes "good" multicultural children's literature? Most any book can be critiqued from numerous perspectives: first and foremost is the book's literary quality--plot, character development, setting, themes, and style; of secondary importance is the author's and/or illustrator's handling of a particular social issue, such as gender or cultural depictions of the characters.