This paper discusses the potentiality of Kiswahili in accelerating social, political, economic and cultural integration within the Great Lakes Region. Presently, Kiswahili is a "de facto" lingua franca spoken by almost 100 million people in the world (Ntakirutimana, 2000). This is an indication of its viability in promoting unity among…

Although violence in Northern Ireland has been "neither halted or prevented" (Tomasevski, 2003a, p. 7), few would deny that the scale of the conflict has been reduced. This paper argues that a vital purpose of education in Northern Ireland should be peacebuilding and the promotion of social cohesion. In particular, the paper looks at the…

The academically underprepared community college student may also be psychosocially underprepared for college, a condition contributing to the development of classroom-specific social phobia and to the high attrition rate at community colleges. The "Find Your Voice Program" uses individual and group cognitive-behavioral techniques to develop…

Increasing anxieties about the growing Latina/o population in the United States have fueled virulent xenophobia toward immigrants. This essay proposes the need to forge strategic political alliances by constructing this population as a bloc, a nexus of diverse groups that differ at the level of national origin, race, residential status, class,…

Intergroup attitudes were assessed in European American 1st-grade (M=6.99 years, SD=0.32) and 4th-grade (M=10.01 years, SD=0.36) children (N=138) attending ethnically homogeneous schools to test hypotheses about racial biases and interracial friendships. An Ambiguous Situations Task and an Intergroup Contact Assessment were administered to all…

This study explored how an awareness of psychological acculturation can help faculty to understand rural/Appalachian students' classroom experiences. By using a thematic analysis technique, selections from student journals were identified that captured the perspective of being a rural/Appalachian student adjusting to the new cultural system of a…

The state of ESL in Canada has been a looming, mishandled entity. Canadians espouse the benefits of diversity and have politically correct policies concerning racism and equity for the linguistically disadvantaged, but in reality something has gone terribly wrong. This article outlines specific myths and delusions that plague educational…

This brief article describes the Sixth Annual World Congress and Exposition on Disabilities (WCD), held December 1-3, 2005 at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. For three days, hundreds of people visited more than 150 exhibits, attended more than 80 work sessions on a wide range of special needs issues and were…

Because of high unemployment rates among youth in Europe, comparative research has focused on identification of those risks and opportunities associated with the integration process from unemployment to work. The integration process of immigrant youth, however, received much less attention, despite their initially higher risk of unemployment than…

In an "ideal" democratic society, publicly funded schools serve many purposes. Aside from its educational mandate, schools are places for neighbourhood integration, social capital formation and the fostering of civil society. For newly arrived immigrants, especially those with young children, schools are important sites of settlement…

Integration is a process which works in two directions. It requires immigrant students to adapt and adhere to common values ... but it also requires an openness to diversity in the social and scholastic milieu of the host society. As a host language teacher and researcher, the author has long struggled with the definition of…

Even within the perceived homogeneity of the American hinterlands, a plethora of social issues and concerns threaten contemporary society. Among applied communicators, and especially among public relations practitioners, increasingly complex relationships must be satisfactorily nurtured so that people and institutions can be helped to seek…

As a guide to learning about other cultures, the first edition of this book used 100 critical incidents spread across 18 themes of human interaction. This edition has the same goal as the first edition, to improve formal efforts to prepare people for interaction with cultures other than their own, but it introduces a number of new incidents and…

This classification system is intended to offer a conceptual framework for information; the framework is relevant to the long-term consequences of disease, injuries or disorders, and applicable both to personal health care, including early identification and prevention, and to the mitigation of environmental and societal barriers. It begins with…

Building on previous research, this study examined the reciprocal relationship between academic achievement and satisfaction of 1001 seniors at the University of Missouri-Columbia. Students completed a survey which measured overall satisfaction, ratings of academic and social experiences, whether the student would recommend the university to a…