The internationalisation of education has become a major focus of international, national and institutional attention, reflected in a substantial and expanding literature on how internationalisation is manifested, how it might be promoted, its implications for areas such as government policy, strategic planning and management, educational quality,…

During the past 10 years, a Japanese instructor at an American university has learned to use her cultural background to her advantage. As a graduate student at Bowling Green State University (Ohio), she first perceived her background as an obstacle to her teaching and tried to pretend that she was not different from other faculty. But this mindset…

As rural communities become more culturally diverse, the institutions and organizations that serve them must assist this cultural transition by providing a framework for change. Such a framework includes a vision of healthy diverse communities that are conscious of changing demographics and willing to reevaluate community self-image. Three…

Teachers of English as a Second Language (ESL) are responsible not only for teaching students about the rules of language, but also for encouraging the understanding of and empathy for those who are native and non-native speakers of the target language. Where there is cultural diversity, there is often intolerance, and Taiwan is no exception. A…

In-class activities that provide students with intercultural interactions and supplemental lectures that define critical concepts can facilitate the appreciation of diversity in the classroom. One such activity, useful for the beginning of courses, involves the creation of two separate culture codes, or set of instructions, for introducing…

These four papers are from a symposium facilitated by Eugene Andette on work force issues facing human resources development (HRD) at the 1995 Academy of Human Resource Development conference. "Meaning Construction and Personal Transformation: Alternative Dimensions of Job Loss" (Terri A. Deems) reports a study conducted to explore the ways…

An analysis of sociocultural aspects of a dinner conversation is presented, part of a larger study of the pragmatics of second language discourse. Salient features of the discourse are examined in terms of implicit frames of reference about social membership that are brought into play in interaction. Primary data come from the conversation between…

During the five centuries of contact between Native and non-Native peoples of the Americas, thousands of intermediaries have moved across the continents' cultural frontiers. These cultural brokers have included traders, missionaries, persons of mixed race, diplomats, Indian schoolchildren attending missionary or government boarding schools, White…

This paper describes the experiences of an English teacher from Washington State University who taught English in Japan for a year. The teacher concluded after her year in Japan that the country is and has been involved in a less-than-conscious national effort to "stonewall" the effective teaching of English as a second language in all…

Field research conducted at a Japanese computer-assembly plant in Germany is reported, and aspects of translingual and intercultural communication between two American competitors, the Japanese and the Germans, are examined. Translingual communication is defined as any language-based communication and information transfer between native speakers…

This study used the marginal man theory to try to understand the work experiences of a group of Chinese immigrant professors at American institutions of higher education. Marginal man theory describes an individual with dual, perhaps not resolvable identities in two cultures. Five male professors at a Midwestern university participated in the…

This booklet outlines a holistic approach for counseling those with addictive disorders. The program is based on the idea that any activity, whether physical, mental, or spiritual, contributes to the tendency toward addiction, and that counseling should help an individual for a lifetime. The primary goal is to implement reasonable, responsible,…

This paper provides Indian parents of children with disabilities with information from the Education for Parents of Indian Children with Special Needs Project concerning communication between Indian parents and non-Indian service providers. Five basic strategies for effective communication are reviewed: (1) when you do not understand, ask for…

A study applied an integrative approach using participatory, quantitative, and qualitative research methods to help the administration of a mid-sized private elementary school discipline and communicate with minority (African-American) students. Micro-ethnographies based on observations at the school were constructed by 12 researchers (students in…

Culture was not considered significant in foreign language instruction until the direct method was introduced at the end of the nineteenth century. By the 1970s, language teachers came to realize that language was deeply rooted in culture and could not be separated from it. International understanding has been emphasized in foreign language…