This chapter uses the Job, Career, Calling conceptual framework to explore the career motivations of 119 mid-level administrators in international higher education. Further, the primary job responsibilities of the mid-level administrators are also examined to determine if work aligns with motivation. We find that international center directors…

This theoretical review is an overview of three important theories: schema theory, information-processing theory, and sociocultural theory. Second/foreign language teachers need to familiarize themselves with these theories if they want to teach culturally unfamiliar texts more successfully in their language classrooms. Although each of these…

Training and learning are the personal process in which individuals interact with social and cultural contexts. Immigrant trainees bring their early educational and life experiences into training classrooms, and their learning is strongly affected by their prior socialization and socio-cultural experiences. Therefore, it is necessary to provide…

In this article Jacquelyn Cooper-Edwards describes how she employed special strategies to help her students in a sixth grade class identified as "6E," many of whom were English language learners. It was quietly understood that the students in the homerooms assigned higher letters such as "6A" were considered the high achievers.…

This article highlights how English language learners' (ELLs) prior knowledge can be used to help learn science vocabulary. The article explains that the concept of prior knowledge needs to encompass the ELL student's native language, previous science learning, native literacy skills, and native cultural knowledge and life experiences.…

In this article, the author shares some ways that social studies teachers in the United States have worked to scaffold knowledge, skills, and dispositions that over time create global awareness and worldmindedness--habits of the mind that foster knowledge, interest and engagement in global issues, local/global connections, and diverse cultures.…

Effectively teaching mathematics to speakers of other languages requires teachers to recognize, validate, honor, and support the math that these students have already learned before entering a U.S. classroom. To do so, they must become aware of procedures, types of math instruction, and students' current performance levels. They should be…

Beulah Heights University, a predominately African-American institution, specializes in reaching the adult student of average age 38. Most of these students have 9-to-5 jobs as well as family and church responsibilities. Seated in the classroom, there are pastors, teachers, church administrators, health care workers, salespersons, bank tellers,…

Many diversity courses that prepare pre-service teachers do not address the significance or the impact of language barriers on linguistically diverse learners. Often time, new and veteran teachers construct their bilingual and/or bidialectical students as others and are unaware of how to use their students' social, cultural, and political…

Maintains that full-day kindergarten programs can derive at least part of their curriculum from the diverse gifts of social and cultural knowledge that children bring to the classroom. Includes a description of a kindergarten class that explored the topic of grandparents. (BB)

Children can learn a lot about social studies by "reconstructing a culture" in the classroom. To reconstruct a culture, students can make use of prior knowledge to build a hierarchy of concepts about culture as well as learn social science subject knowledge appropriate to their grade level. In addition, they can have the tactile…

Research on the schema theory of comprehension and cultural schemata, on background cultural knowledge, is reviewed and related to reading comprehension theory and practice. In line with the research findings, several activities for pre-reading, reading, and post-reading are described, with suggestions for teacher preparation and classroom use.…

Describing what cultural studies or what pedagogy is all about is very complex, because there are many contradictory perspectives and paradigms in both disciplines. There is no single object of study, no unified body of theory, no one-and-only methodology that defines cultural studies or pedagogy completely. In this article, the authors focus on…

Distance education has become a major form of education in the United States. This surge in popularity has launched a plethora of scholarship emphasizing the distillation of those strategies which inform effective, learning experiences in the distance environment. A growing consensus among researchers recognizes the need for a holistic approach to…