The main purpose of this curriculum unit is to deconstruct stereotypes about Mexico and Mejicano/a people through the study of history, literature, and social realities. The curriculum unit is aimed at secondary humanities teachers and would be appropriate for team teaching. It includes a pre-unit and post-unit lesson, and 10 lessons that focus on…

This paper describes how two "American Dream" courses were created--one was a senior seminar in Fall 2001 that developed after the tragic events of that September and the other, its offspring, was a Fall 2002 class in the American Novel, which was planned deliberately. The paper first looks at how 9/11 changed the senior seminar by…

In this 13th edition of "Adventuring with Books," teachers and librarians will find descriptions of more than 850 texts (published between 1999 and 2001) suitable for student use in background research, unit study, or pleasure reading, and children will find books that delight, amuse, and entertain. The texts described in the book are…

This instructional package, consisting of a text and 27 transparencies, is designed for the middle and secondary school classroom. The unit focuses on three topics: (1) "Germany in the European Union (EU)" (four lessons focusing on history of the EU, characteristics of member states, and EU governance); (2) "Economic Issues in…

Two common tendencies that lead many mainstream students to misinterpret other cultures are the combative response and the exoticizing response. These misinterpretations, however, can be excellent learning moments for helping students understand the constructed nature of culture and the contextual nature of learning. Transformational multicultural…

This is a theoretical study of adolescent maturation within a cultural context. Personality development and disintegration due to the pressure of a dominant culture on a minority culture is considered. An attempt is made to understand how teachers might assist students to work out their psychological growth by story telling. The need for cultural…

The cultural production of the free markets has surpassed the commissions of all the monarchs and popes put together. Because the production of art, artifice, and criticism has become so vast and various, almost any hypothesis can be posed about culture--no matter how absurd one's speculation may be--and countless supporting examples and arguments…

This report, a series of three background papers, was prepared as part of the Thailand Secondary Vocational Education Sector Study. The first background paper, "Intro Changing Workplaces, Changing Skills: Views from the Thai Private Sector on Work-Organization, Employee Recruitment and Selection" (Charles Abelmann, Lee Kian Chang,…

The World Bank has been assisting the efforts of developing countries to reform secondary education systems for more than 35 years. During this period, the context and imperatives for education reform have changed considerably due to various factors such as globalization of the world economy and the impact of new technologies. This paper is one of…

In this collection of essays, the authors use Lev Vygotsky's cultural-historical theory of human development to frame their analyses of schooling, with particular emphasis on the ways in which literacy practices are mediated by social interaction and cultural artifacts. The collection extends Vygotsky's cultural-historical theoretical framework to…

This book presents five composites of teachers and students in action to portray and elaborate on the English Language Arts standards developed by the National Council of Teachers of English and the International Reading Association. The book demonstrates that teaching and learning are not generic, homogeneous activities that transcend time,…

A pilot for "Cornerstone," a new core curriculum at Samford University that aims for a more deliberate inclusion and consistent coverage of communication competence, was launched to coincide with the university's sesquicentennial celebration in 1992. The Cultural Legacies component of Cornerstone dealt with instruction in speech…

In teaching international students in Britain and students in the United States in multicultural and multiclass classrooms, a common resistance was found to the consideration of how culture and society shape identity. Even international students from collectivist cultures, who see their identities as inextricable from their communities in their…

Based on the idea that, when bedding down for sleep, children all over the world welcome the comforting sound of lullabies sung by people they love, this collection contains 21 sleep rhymes from 17 nations and republics. Each lullaby in the collection is presented in its native language (Thai, Italian, Yoruba, Welsh, Ukrainian, Slovenian, Abenaki,…

This book recounts the story of the people who have studied and taught composition in American colleges since the early 19th century. It shows where many of today's teachers' practices and assumptions about writing come from, and it translates what theories and techniques of teaching have, over time, indicated about attitudes toward students,…