This study is a "teaching case." It is a description of events written to help education students understand the complex, ambiguous situations which arise in rural teaching. The limitations of scientific rules and principles for teacher training are especially obvious in rural Alaska schools--where teachers who are typically Caucasian…

A proposal for introducing basic communication courses into China's foreign language curriculum argues that it is a change needed to meet the new objectives of foreign language teaching in that country. Four suggestions for a smooth transition include: (1) basing the communication courses on what already exists in the curriculum; (2) using a large…

The field of intercultural communication study may be best explored by analyzing sojourners, individuals who leave their homes and travel abroad to learn as students, workers, or occupational trainees. A review of the early research reveals that the similarities of well-traveled sojourners' communication behavior and general outlook is greater…

This report summarizes comments of 10 researchers on topics relevant to intercultural education in Western Europe. The two-day seminar was organized by the French Commission for Culture in Brussels, the General Confederation of Teachers, and the Socio-Cultural Centre for Migrants in Brussels to bring research insights to Belgian educators involved…

A handbook for foreign teaching assistants (TAs) is presented by foreign graduate students with teaching experience and other educators who have worked closely with them. Language skills, teaching strategies, cultural issues, resources, and the environment at the University of California, Berkeley, are addressed in 16 articles. Article titles and…

Forty caregivers in five child care centers in Israel and seven centers in the United States were asked to complete the Teacher Temperament Questionnaire about the children in their care. Total numbers of children participating were 108 Israeli children and 132 American children. Caregivers were first asked to describe an ideal child, and then to…

The great waves of foreign immigration, the onset of rapid industrialization, the emergence of an urban working class--all features of the post Civil War United States that might have contributed to rising crime rates--did not. Ted Robert Gurr suggests that a growth of the "civilizing process" occurred in which people turned away from violence and…

Acculturation and the development of positive self-concept among Asian American women are both complicated by factors associated with their ethnicity and gender. Physical differences, cultural barriers, and racial and sex discrimination have made difficult the complete assimilation of Asian females into American society. Furthermore, failure to…

A college class on the family relationship patterns of some American minority groups was structured to foster attitude change as well as acquisition of information. As a teaching tool, a semantic differential was developed and administered before and after the course. In this particular class, many students found their views of Black and Chicano…

The variety of culturally-constituted conceptions of self are investigated in this essay. A history of ethnopsychology is given which includes an examination of evolutionist and sociological theories of the self in relation to culture and society. Various approaches to ethnopsychology are considered, and different facets of the self are explored.…

A collection of five activities for teaching about Japan at the elementary level is provided. An introductory activity is designed to elicit student perceptions of the Japanese through drawings and words. A second activity uses Japanese folk tales. The remaining three activities are presented by grade level (1-3) and provide strategies for…

Current discussions about literacy often focus on how economic changes are raising expectations for literacy achievement. The emergence of a so-called knowledge economy or learning economy requires more people to do more things with print. Less attention has been given, however, to how the pressure to produce more literacy affects the contexts in…

The National Institute of Education (NIE) Conference on Studies in Reading, held in 1974, featured ten panel discussions, each focusing on a designated topic related to reading. This publication reviews the reports of recommended research and development activities produced by the panels for the following topical areas: semantics, concepts, and…

A national random sample of over 14,000 high school seniors was studied with respect to socio-cultural differences in responses to cognitive test items. Six different cognitive tests and ten different groups were analyzed. The tests were: vocabulary, picture-number, reading, letter-groups, mathematics, and mosaic comparisons. The groups were:…

This paper describes how the author has used children's stories, published in the People's Republic of China, to explore the ethnocentrism in American academic social psychology. The stories are read to students in the author's undergraduate classes in social psychology, who then discuss the themes of the stories. Comparisons are made with stories…