The controversial issue of cultural authenticity in children's literature resurfaces continually, always eliciting strong emotions and a wide range of perspectives. This collection explores the complexity of this issue by highlighting important historical events, current debates, and new questions and critiques. Articles in the collection are…

This paper presents a case study of the Puerto Rico Statewide Systemic Initiative (PR-SSI) based on the analysis of data gathered from semi-structured interviews with key officials, field notes from site visits, progress and evaluation reports, and documents used in dissemination workshops for teachers. Although substantial data on student…

This paper provides a definition for the word democracy and examines some of the many definitions and descriptions of democracy that have been offered over time. The paper offers a lesson plan for teaching about democracy, beginning with an introduction: "Democracy as an Argument or a Developing Dialogue" (Donald Bragaw; Michael…

In modern Western society, traditional structures and organizations from the first modernity, with its hierarchical models and well-structured and distinct components, are currently confronted by the individualization trends of the second modernity. This need for new structures is particularly apparent in present-day education. Education, in the…

This theme issue of "InSEA News" is about children's art exhibitions and their cultural and educational contexts. The authors, from Canada, Australia, the United States, and Scotland, offer a variety of viewpoints about why, where, when, and how children's art exhibitions should be displayed. Issues discussed include who designs the…

Suggesting that teaching in New Times requires that educators read and re/mediate the social relations, the cultural knowledges, and the relationships of power between adolescents and their social, biological, and semiotic universes, this collection of essays offers new ways of seeing and talking about adolescents and their literacies. Most of the…

The report discusses the activities of the Instituto para la Promocion de la Culture Civica (ICC), a non-partisan, not-for-profit Mexican nongovernmental organization (NGO) that has as its mission: to promote the advancement of a civic culture understood as a system of values, ideas, traits of character, dispositions, inclinations, attitudes,…

The borders that separate and connect different cultures often come into sharpest relief when the focus is on themes and motifs found in the literature or the visual arts of several lands. With the Internet, students can discover such points of intercultural contact for themselves, crossing borders that can lead them to a broader perspective on…

This paper tells the story of its authors' living and teaching experiences in Afghanistan from 1967 to 1969. The paper explains that "Don" taught at Kabul University, "Alleen" taught at the American International School of Kabul, and their three young children were in elementary school. It describes their day-to-day activities…

As a main dimension of intercultural communication competence, intercultural sensitivity has increasingly gained attention in research in different disciplines. In the United States, Chen and Starosta (1996) developed an instrument, comprising 5 factors with 24 items, for measuring intercultural sensitivity. In this study, Chen and Starosta's…

This international collection of essays describes the state of community participation among the world's youth. An array of empirical research is used to present portraits of contemporary youth constructing their civic identities through such means as community service and political activism. The collection contains the following essays:…

The 61st edition of the "Texas Almanac" has a reputation as the definitive source for Texas information since 1857. It contains details of the Census 2000 official population count, including statewide, county and town counts, plus an analysis of the numbers by experts at Texas's State Data Center. It includes information about politics,…

Organizational culture has an incredible function and is an incredible function, as it is both product and process, and effect and cause. Within an investigation of tertiary students' perceptions of the fairness of educational assessment using grounded theory methodology, it became apparent that it was important to consider the influence of course…

This paper is based on an ethnographic study that examined the study abroad experiences of 20 male Japanese students in Vancouver (Canada) from a post-colonial perspective. This perspective allows the researcher to view the Japanese students studying in the West as deeply embedded in a transnational context where global and national ideologies and…

As the world becomes more global, communicating with people from other cultures becomes a necessity. The cultural mix challenges individuals to improve their knowledge and skills in intercultural communication. This course proposal describes a 3-credit course designed to introduce students to the basic concepts, theories, and practices of…