In the 1980's and 1990's, results from flurries of standardized exams (particularly in 4th and 8th grade mathematics and science) reached the attention of ever-growing numbers of Americans with an alarming message: our children are not even close to keeping up with those in China, Japan, and Korea. As a step towards improving American classrooms,…

Innatism is the belief that most of the human personality can be determined by genes. This ideology is dangerous, especially when it claims to be scientific. The present study investigates conceptions of 1060 students from Estonia and France related to genetic determinism of some human behaviours. Factors taken into account included students'…

The work presented here is an empirical study of how advanced learners of English as a foreign language in Argentina access and understand the culture-specific dimensions of literary narrative texts. It has three purposes. First, to extend research into reading in a foreign language to take account of the culture-specific content of texts. Second,…

A practice-based dialectic theory of identity was used in this study to explore the cultural-historical context of an urban charter school in which a group of newly arrived Muslim Turk refugee students' academic identities were formed. The school, located in the Southwestern United States, was founded by a global Islamist movement. Ethnographic…

A teacher's intention to refer students to mental health professionals is important to the early identification of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and prevention of further problems. The theory of planned behavior (TPB) was used to determine the strongest belief-related predictors of a teacher's intentions to refer students with…

The disproportionate representation of students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds in special education programs is a complex issue that has long troubled practitioners, educational leaders, and researchers. This article reports on a mixed-method collaborative case analysis that examined local patterns of disproportionality in…

Research suggests that behavioral self-regulation skills are critical for early school success, but few studies have explored such links among young children in Europe. This study examined the contribution of early self-regulation to academic achievement gains among children in France, Germany, and Iceland. Gender differences in behavioral…

Leaders in higher education bear the responsibility of creating educational environments and programming that promote student development and help prepare graduates to work, live, and lead in today's interconnected and global society. Such institutional programming, which fosters "intercultural maturity," defined as the cognitive,…

Purpose: Considering student achievement in a nation-wide examination as an indicator of school effectiveness, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the common characteristics across nine highly performing schools. Design/methodology/approach: The study was designed as a multiple-case study. Semi-structured interviews with teachers and…

This article explores second year pre-service teachers' ability to work with Indigenous students and their families during a small-scale project conducted in an Indigenous community. Supported field placements offered the pre-service teachers valuable opportunities to engage with the teaching of reading to Indigenous students "on their…

This article explores the ethical tensions and dilemmas that arose for 2 U.S. social work students during an 8-month international clinical internship in northern Uganda. These students encountered cultural differences related to issues of confidentiality, autonomy, and self-determination. Student experiences were analyzed using the cultural…

The author finds Roland S. Persson's (2012a) paper to be timely, fascinating, important and powerful. At risk of mixing metaphors, it provides much food for thought and a penetrating lens through which all those vested in the optimal realisation of human potential would be prudent to review their own perceptions, boundaries of belief and…

Dr. Persson's (2012a) target article addresses a number of key points that will greatly impact the study of giftedness, gifted education, and talent development in the "flat" world of the 21st century and beyond. Research in these areas needs to continually reflect upon changes in the social world outside its narrow purview to validate its…

The author recognises the fact that knowledge of cultural diversity and its implications is growing in the field of giftedness research and practice. In some ways, the target article could therefore be considered "old news." The author contends that his effort to address culture variation and its problematic impact on research, however, is not to…

Despite an increasing demand for marketing researchers familiar with ethnographic methods, ethnographic consumer research has received little coverage in current marketing curricula. The innovation discussed in the present paper addresses this problem: it introduces the notion of "cultural relativism" and gives students hands-on experience in…