In this paper we describe a method for exploring young children's views of illness causality in social context. Studies of children's conceptualisation of illness have predominantly focused on the nature of children's knowledge rather than locating that knowledge within socio-cultural contexts. Adopting a socio-constructivist perspective we sought…

This study compared the pattern of relationships among personality, vocational interests, and career exploration within an integrated framework between 369 American and 392 Hong Kong university students. The first hypothesis predicted differential contributions of the universal and indigenous personality dimensions based on the Cross-cultural…

This study was conducted to investigate the motivations of 974 Turkish pre-service teachers for choosing teaching as a career and to examine their perceptions about the teaching profession. Correlations, t test, ANCOVAs and MANCOVAs were used to explore the relationships among participants' motivations and perceptions, and to make comparisons…

Even though they are perceived similar from outside, all schools have distinct characteristics and a culture that differ them from other schools. School culture, is one of the important factors that play role in school efficiency and success. The purpose of this study was to examine the culture of a successful school profoundly. This study was a…

Recent years have witnessed rapid growth in language learning within online collaborative learning projects constructed between educational institutions in different cultural and pedagogic contexts. This qualitative case study investigated the role of teacher communication in a short online project between language classes in secondary schools in…

Meritocracy is a powerful ideology that was used by the Chinese Communist Party during China's transition to a market economy. With the "Gaokao" in particular, higher education selection became an ideal vehicle for the Party to associate itself with the ideology of meritocracy. This article investigates the extent to which higher…

Drawing from a larger qualitative study, this article examines the narratives of bilingual Latina/o teacher candidates in South Texas. The findings reveal that bilingual teacher candidates are linguistically subordinated by the marginalized status of Spanish in the United States and by deficit perspectives of Spanish of the Southwest. Their…

In line with recent Conversation Analytic work on language learning as situated practice, this article investigates how interactants can create language learning opportunities for themselves and others in and through social interaction. The study shows how the participants of "Big Brother Finland," a reality TV show, whose main…

There is considerable agreement about the fact that the presence of researchers in the classroom mediates teaching and learning. Why "should" two very different forms of human activity, one designed to study the other, interact and mediate each other? In this article, we propose cultural-historical activity theory as a framework for understanding…

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 study explores teaching English as a foreign language in the West Bank, Palestine. It investigates the perspectives of a group of faculty, preservice, and in-service teachers about teaching and learning English in the primary grades under the overarching harsh realities of political conflict and instability. The study demonstrates the…

This article examines whether the conventional notion of bilingual literacy is applicable to speakers of creole languages in terms of autonomy, codification, instrumentalisation, education and literacy practices. It then goes on to describe alternative conceptions of both literacy and bilingualism that appear to be more relevant to creole…

In this essay, the author addresses the current status of emergent literacy research. First, she sets the stage by briefly exploring the important questions and continuing contributions of the emergent literacy perspective. Next, she examines some inherent theoretical tensions--especially how emergent literacy's research questions have bounded and…

In this article I will discuss the originally German term and concept of Bildung. The reason why I, as a Scandinavian, find such a discussion both interesting and important is that the trend of instrumentalism in modern educational politics and pedagogical thinking (at least in Scandinavian countries) is problematic; that is, looking on knowledge…

This paper details a four-stage methodology for developing early alcohol interventions for at-risk Aboriginal youth. Stage 1 was an integrative approach to Aboriginal education that upholds Aboriginal traditional wisdom supporting respectful relationships to the Creator, to the land and to each other. Stage 2 used quantitative methods to…