Praises the rare teacher who respected his native culture when growing up. Deplores negative attitudes of some future second-language teachers toward Mexican-American culture. Colleges of education can nurture diversity by creating a multicultural environment. Courses should be rigorous and require students to incorporate multicultural concepts…

Aims to identify communication difficulties that arise when Eastern and Western cultures meet in the context of language teaching and learning. With particular focus on China, this article attempts to make explicit some underlying assumptions held by teachers and to contrast these with the expectations of Chinese students. Cultural perspectives…

Examines the longitudinal effects of parent involvement on tenth-grade students' learning and whether the same pattern of influences exists for boys and girls and for students from different ethnic groups. Results suggest that parent involvement has an effect on students' grade point average and that the same influences hold across gender but were…

Describes a high-school gender-studies course that used the structure of mythology and folk tradition as a basis for examining contemporary works of literature. Notes that the course provided students the opportunity to reflect on gender roles, on the lives of men and women in other cultures, and on students' own relationships within gender…

Provides a classification and description of school leadership models found in contemporary, Western, English-language research literature, focusing on instructional leadership, transformational leadership, moral leadership, participative leadership, managerial leadership, and contingent leadership. For each category, the paper clarifies…

This study investigated ways four elementary teachers learned to use technology in a way sensitive to cultural differences of their students. The most significant finding was that as teachers started using three to five computers in their classrooms, they shifted from large-group to small-group instruction. Discusses past research on cultural…

Discusses the design of multimedia for international audiences and provides recommendations for instructional-design principles for global audiences. Highlights include knowing the target audience, user testing, language versions, common international symbols, cultural differences, values and customs, fonts, screen size and display, and copyright…

A study of a group of South Korean secondary-school English teachers' perceived difficulties in adopting communicative language teaching reveals that the difficulties have their source in the differences between the underlying educational theories of South Korea and those of Western countries. (Author/VWL)

Reacts to Ruth Spack's commentary "The Rhetorical Construction of Multilingual Students." Each reaction is followed by a response from the author. (Author/VWL)

Explores narratives given by a group of British students on their future career aspirations, attending particularly to diversity. Offers an analysis of the self that is highly fractured, and reveals that inner diversity may account for contradictory student narratives. Suggests implications for an alternative feminist critical pedagogy that…

Presents the results of two groups of Spanish compositions from fifth-semester students. The purpose of the study was to assess the students' ability to observe cultural differences between the target culture and the native culture as presented in a commercial and to assess how the procedures to view the commercial affected the quality of their…

Neglect of divergent cultural values and belief systems; perennial debates about moral, ethical, and legal questions; power struggles; and technically oriented initiatives have thwarted school-reform efforts. Initiating frequent policy changes to accommodate fads overlooks the slowness of change and the learning process in complex social…

This study compared patterns of family adaptation to children with developmental delays of South Asian families living in California with similar Euro-American families. Analysis of parent interviews found differences in family support, spousal relations, gender roles, cultural identity, and spirituality. Similarities were found in hope for…

In the context of a project implementing Belgian observation and assessment scales in German kindergartens, a study examined German practitioners' attitudes toward systematic observation of children. The most significant overall finding was the low priority attributed to systematic observation in teacher training and practice. These findings are…

Compared exploratory, symbolic, and social play and interaction of Argentine and U.S. 20-month olds and their mothers. Found patterns of cultural similarity in sex differences and differences in the use of exploratory and symbolic play. Overall, Argentine and U.S. dyads used different modes of exploration, representation, and interaction,…