The authors challenge educators to speculate on how to address local issues in a world that is increasingly diverse and global. This Research and Policy section emphasizes the seemingly paradoxical importance of both local and global literacy, illuminating the tension between the preservation of local literacy and a global standardization of…

This article discusses Estonian personal name signs. According to study there are four personal name sign categories in Estonian Sign Language: (1) arbitrary name signs; (2) descriptive name signs; (3) initialized-descriptive name signs; (4) loan/borrowed name signs. Mostly there are represented descriptive and borrowed personal name signs among…

Evidence-based practice requires that clinical decisions be based on evidence from rigorously controlled research studies. At this time, very few studies have directly examined the efficacy of clinical intervention methods for bilingual children. Clinical decisions for this population cannot, therefore, be based on the strongest forms of research…

While most studies on diverse organizations have been directed at business organizations, the academic sector has also become increasingly international and heterogeneous. Few large-scale studies have investigated multicultural academic departments and none of those have dealt with diversity and group processes. Therefore, a survey was directed…

This is an account of an ongoing project embedded within a university programme in music teacher education, designed and developed in the spirit of community music's embrace of musical exchanges within and between communities. The project is aimed at providing musicians-becoming-teachers with first-hand interaction with children and youth of the…

In recent years there has been increased attention to the importance of appropriate and relevant counseling interventions with culturally and religiously diverse populations. In accordance with the fact that Muslims rely on Qur'anic verses when answering the larger questions of life, "metaphor therapy" comes across as a technique that counselors…

This article presents a study that examined students' perceptions toward online practice and their developing attitudes toward the online learning process. The results indicated that both cultural background and personal qualities affect students' perceptions.

Within the UK and in many parts of the world, official accounts of what it is to make sense of religion are framed within a rhetorics of neutrality in which such study is premised upon the possibility of dispassionate engagement and analysis. This paper, which is largely theoretical in scope, explores both the affordances and the costs of such an…

International students, who study a foreign language abroad, experience more adversities than their domestic peers. The social challenges they face include problems with immigration status, isolation, difficulty speaking a new language, and learning unfamiliar customs. There is limited research focused on the coping strategies of these…

Research conducted over the past decade has consistently reported no significant differences in learning outcomes for students of fully online or face-to-face (F2F) instruction. Only a small number of these studies, however, have focused on courses in second language (L2) teacher preparation programs. Even fewer studies have compared the impact of…

This paper reports on the way in which Facebook Group used as a learning management system can enhance Thai students' effective language learning (positive attitude and motivation) in a private university in the vicinity of Bangkok. These two variables are seen to influence learners' achievement in language learning, and they also interdependently…

Since the 1970s, international fieldwork has provided opportunities for small numbers of pre-service teachers to teach and learn in a culture different from their own. Research into this fieldwork suggests that pre-service teachers are positive about their experiences, although questions remain about the ethics underpinning some of these programs.…

As members of a nationally accredited research project (I?+?D+i) InterMED (ref.: FF2011-25500) being carried out in the field of Intercultural Mediation, we are aware of the mediator's delicate role in communicative interactions between health professionals and foreign population. Sales has pointed out the dangers of stereotyping minorities and…

The community college is the primary path that Hispanic students choose to start their college careers. Americans who speak English as their second language will continue to grow and require community colleges to offer more culturally diverse educational programs with specific resources devoted to them. This qualitative study was comprised of 11…

This article describes an undergraduate Participatory Action Research (PAR) course in which students with and without intellectual disabilities collaborated as co-researchers in order to explore various aspects of the university experience. The article describes the university course as well as presents results of the students' PAR projects. The…