First conceptualized in the 1960s, the term culture-bound disorders refers to a classification of mental disorders or syndromes that are considered specific or closely related to cultural factors and or particular ethnocultural groups. In Japan, two culture-bound disorders, "taijin kyofusho" and "hikikomori," have seized the…

Western and Eastern dance styles have developed in their respective countries on their own, neither really influencing the other, but today the conjugation between Western and Eastern cultures is a phenomenon that the dance world is experiencing to the fullest. In dance, these cultures are so interwoven that sometimes it is hard to distinguish the…

This is one of the commentaries on Wu's "Interpretation, autonomy, and transformation: Chinese pedagogic discourse in a cross-cultural perspective" ("JCS", 43(5), 569-590). It highlights the paper's demystification of Western pedagogic discourse and recovery of the meaning of Chinese traditional pedagogic discourse as a…

This article reports on the final year of a four year research project into the influences on British South Asian women's choice of teaching as a career and on their subsequent career development. The research cohort was interviewed during their initial teacher training year on a PGCE (Post Graduate Certificate of Education) course in the English…

The present study examined conversations of 164 mothers from seven different cultural contexts when reminiscing with their 3-year-old children. We chose samples based on their sociodemographic profiles, which represented three different cultural models: (1) autonomy (urban middle-class families from Western societies), (2) relatedness (rural…

This paper seeks to develop a theoretical framework that is applicable to research on recent immigrant Chinese mothers in the United States. Although Black, Chicana, and transnational feminist epistemologies exist in previous scholarship, there is no comparable discourse in the study of Chinese mothers' experiences in the United States. In this…

This commentary focuses on school leadership as connective activity. Leadership is essentially about designing, managing and energizing the right connections, and untying the wrong ones, in order to make schools successful, equitable, happier places. The author's basic proposition is that school leaders who influence students and their communities…

In this article, I propose that the west/non-west dualism sets limits on our thinking about internationalisation of the curriculum. While this dualism and that of the west/the rest offer some heuristic capacity to surface issues of imperial power and hegemonic grip, I suggest that it has congealed into a grand narrative that inhibits our…

This paper draws on the narratives of three teaching staff as they collaborate to transform student teachers' thinking and praxis about sustainability through a bicultural perspective that acknowledges indigenous and Western ideologies. It will discuss some of the experiences that the student teachers found to be transformational such as:…

This essay ruminates on the connective tissue between teaching undergraduates and teaching yogis/yoginis. In this essay, the author employs bell hooks's work, particularly her work on love, compassion, and "engaged pedagogy" from "Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom" and "Teaching Critical…

The purpose of this article is to analyse the nature of the global hegemonies in higher education. While anti-colonial thinkers describe the dominance of the Western paradigm as an oppression of indigenous culture and knowledge and as neo-colonialism in higher education, their arguments lead to such questions as how much self-determination do…

This paper examines the impact of a politics of resentment, neo-liberal policies, and security concerns on issues of gender justice in schools in various western countries. We argue that since the 1990s gender justice in schools has been severely hampered by a politics of resentment, or backlash politics, and the presence of neo-liberal discourses…

After describing the basic tenets of Invitational Education and Buddhist psychology, this article explores four commonalities and their implications: The individual is in control; knowing is not doing; others can help; and we can facilitate others' efforts to use effective strategies to reach happiness. The paper concludes by contrasting…

Students at the National College of Natural Medicine (NCNM) are eligible to concurrently study both Western medicine, as reflected by the Doctor of Naturopathic Medicine (ND) program, and Eastern medicine, as exhibited by the Master of Science in Oriental Medicine (MSOM) degree program. The dual track is unique in that the dominant Western…

This research study focused on the factors that enable women of South Asian and African descent to succeed as leaders in the college system. The findings were derived from online questionnaires and in-depth interviews of 16 racialized women from two Greater Toronto Area (GTA) colleges. Many factors and recommendations were shared. Some of the…