Although international students studying in New Zealand desire and expect contact with their domestic peers, the level of cross-national interactions remains generally low. This paper describes an initiative to promote more and better intercultural understanding within a target group of students having similar needs and interests in a higher…

Studies in creativity most often neglect the aspect of place, of the artist's situated practices in the studio. One reason for this is that the artist's studio is one of the most difficult workplaces in which to gain entry and conduct research. This article is based on grounded research into the studio workplace of the sculptor Oswald Stimm,…

Constructing identities is a highly social, ongoing process. For individuals with disabilities this process can be particularly challenging, given the powerful negative discourses of disability. While there has been some attention given to the issue of identity and disability, there has been little attention paid to the process of identity…

An external evaluation documented what occurred in an inaugural summer camp to teach high school students how to preserve religious freedom by learning about and acting on the history and current state of church-state separation and other first amendment issues. Camp designers hoped to promote religious diversity values and civic engagement in…

Few studies have examined the value orientations of physical education preservice teachers (PTs). The purposes of this study were to: (1) describe the extent to which one cohort of PTs' value orientations changed and developed during a secondary methods course and early field experience (EFE); and (2) determine why PTs' value orientations changed…

This article used data from an ethnographic study to address the unique challenges facing novice teachers in their practice teaching in a cross-cultural context. Participants in the study were 15 student teachers in a U.S. study abroad program in South America. Student teachers' views were sought through a recursive process of review of students'…

Based on the findings of a qualitative case study, this paper describes how a karate school within a community came naturally to include students with disabilities. Data for this study were collected through in-depth interviews with the Sensei or head instructor of the school and participant observations. Findings indicate that the Sensei's…

Background: Listening to how people talk about the consequences of acquired aphasia helps one gain insight into how people construe disability and communication disability in particular. It has been found that some of these construals can be more of a disabling barrier in re-engaging with life than the communication impairment itself. Aims: To…

The purpose of this dissertation was to conduct a sociocultural linguistic study on Ethiopian immigrants in the Denver metropolis. It specifically examined language practice of Ethiopian immigrants at home and in church. The study centered on three Ethiopian Orthodox parish churches, taken as separate communities of practice. The study was…

Although the global call for environmental education is persistent, on a local or regional level, this call can be confronted by educational policies that drive environmental education out of the curriculum. This paper reports on a qualitative case study of the factors contributing to the sustainability of three teacher-driven integrated…

This article documents the contribution of local elementary teachers and examines the teachers' role as a conduit between an urban school and its community. Based on participant observation and interviews with local teachers and parents, the research considers the teachers' bridging position as professional practitioners and community constituents…

In this study, I investigate the digital literacy practices of adult immigrants, and their relationship with transnational processes and practices. Specifically, I focus on their conditions of access to information and communication technologies (ICTs) in their life trajectories, their conditions of learning in a community center, and their…

This article presents a qualitative case study that uses discourse and social semiotic analysis methods in order to examine the rhetorical construction of fictional personas within an online role play used for learning in the college classroom. Of special focus are the differing patterns of semiotic resource use (for example, language and…

In this article, Laura Roy and Kevin Roxas draw from two studies with Somali Bantu refugee families in South Texas and Michigan. Findings from both study sites revealed a disconnect between how educators perceived the Somali Bantu families' educational goals and Somali Bantu families' actual views of education. In contrast to educators'…

This action research examines experiences that students in a grade 10 EFL class had with redesigning a grammar-unit into a topic-based unit. Strategies were formulating significant learning goals and objectives, and implementing and reflecting on activities with three dimensions of Dee Fink's (2003) taxonomy of significant learning: the human…