For young children, literacy is multimodal. Visual images, oral language, gestures, numbers, and other signs are intermingled with printed words during language arts activities in preschool and kindergarten. All children, in particular children from multilingual/multicultural backgrounds, draw on the social, cultural, and emotional roles and…

Pedagogy develops through the interventions of scholars who believe injustice should not be normalised. Such interventions nonetheless subsume monoculturalist assumptions constructed within the US social and academic narrative. The top-down paradigm of "designing pedagogy" is inappropriate for educating adult immigrants, whose…

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…

This paper presents an overview of some of Michael Cole's work, starting with his pioneering research in Liberia with the Kpelle (and later, with Sylvia Scribner, studies of literacy with the Vai, 1981), which was formative of his version of a cultural-historical psychology, his translation and interpretations of the work of L. S. Vygotsky and…

Healthcare delivery today reflects a history of change, which has responded to lifestyle changes, cultural diversity, population needs and expectations. In today's health-care environment it is crucial for health-care professionals to be mindful of cultural factors that affect health. These factors include the intricate interdependent biological,…

Children naturally love to learn, but might not like to be taught in certain ways. Teachers' improper ways of teaching might make a child shut down his or her willingness to learn, which is called "not-learning". Not-learning does not refer to an incapability to learn, but is rather a choice a child intentionally or unintentionally makes…

The last few decades have witnessed both an expansion and a transformation of immigration flows, which pose significant challenges with respect to how people work with differences across culture and space. Against this background, this paper explores how some Chinese immigrant engineers respond to differences in the Canadian labour market. It not…

The present article offers a reflection on creativity and creative pedagogy emerging out of an ongoing dialogue between three authors placed in two very different sociocultural contexts--Denmark and Colombia. Despite obvious geographical, economic, and cultural differences, similar concerns animate our practice when it comes to the question of…

According to a report by the Congressional Research Service, the U.S. population is becoming more racially and ethnically diverse. This increasing change is reflected in every aspect of people's lives, including the classroom. Now more than ever it is necessary for art educators to address the needs of the steadily increasing numbers of culturally…

Our objective is to provide two multidimensional models (i.e., contextual-interaction and Ethnic Educator) including sociopolitical, socioeconomic, sociocultural, and sociohistorical factors explaining underachievement in Latinos. First, we critically discuss single-factor theories (i.e., deficit, resistance, social reproduction, cultural…

Scholars and university administrators have noted significant disparities in the rates at which Native students graduate from college in a timely manner relative to students from other racial/ethnic groups. It has been posited that this is because in order to succeed, Native students must negotiate the contradictory values of Western and Native…

The "Handbook on Innovations in Learning", published in 2014, responded to a call by the U.S. Department of Education (ED) to "leverage the innovation and ingenuity this nation is known for to create programs and projects that every school can implement to succeed." In December 2015, passage of the "Every Student Succeeds…

Studies on second language (L2) learners' strategies tended to characterize strategies as individual learners' cognitive predispositions or personality traits, leaving a critical question unanswered: Why do learners use different strategies in different contexts? From a sociocultural perspective, this article pursued this question by focusing on…

This article proposes an applied theoretical framework that could assist education reformers in Confucian heritage culture (CHC) countries to adopt Western-developed learning practices successfully. This framework is needed because the literature has recently documented a large number of failures in educational reforms at CHC colleges. The main…

Using a constructionist framework in music, specifically through an emphasis on composition, is revolutionizing the field of music and education by bridging the gap between the novice and professional. Much of the research has been spearheaded by Jeanne Bamberger and others, who noted the computer's potential to highlight what it means to be a…