The research literature documents the relative disadvantage of widows in coping with grief, both in a greater vulnerability themselves for mortality or ill health, but also for a sudden loss of resources from losing a spouse. Moreover, widowhood in the Canadian cultural communities may be an additional burden if met with service from mainstream care professionals and agencies at variance with their culturally-appropriate grieving practices and assumptions. Specifically, the meaning(s) of bereavement and grief for Hindu-Canadian widows are not well understood, and the goal of this study is to enhance transcultural understanding of this population in counselling and beyond. An inductive, descriptive qualitative method focusing on the subjective, lived experience of key co-researchers, using selective and nonprobability sampling was utilized to maximize the relatively small sample size typical of a phenomenological approach. This was used to describe and explain the meanings and experiences of grief for five older Hindu-Canadian widows within the context of their own cultural setting and world view. Data were collected from five female members of the Hindu- Canadian communities. An additional triangulation method of a general class of culmraUy-informed co-researchers was used to help corroborate the obtained themes. The co-researcher's responses were the data for this study, and a method of "constant comparative analysis" (I^ininger, 1985) was utilized in a search for themes through a process of higher abstraction. Data analysis of the verbatim transcripts occurred simultaneously with data collection and, guided by Leininger's (1990) 'Thases of Analysis for Qualitative Data," the process unfolded with: (a) collecting and documenting raw data; (b) identification of descriptors; (c) pattern analysis; and (d) theme formulation. Ultimately six themes were abstracted from forty-five sub-categories as a portrait of the meanings and experiences of widowhood for this group of Hindu-Canadian widows. Themes for this group of key co-researchers are as follows: First, status transition from wife to widow meant resignation to the husband's death, rather than acceptance through discrete stages of recovery: Second, meanings and expressions of grief centered on beliefs about the enduring and eternal quality of the husband's life force as intrinsic and essential to the widow's own lifeways: Third, the transition from wife to widow entailed a double affliction in status loss as well as in the personal domain of intimacy and partnership: Fourth, the meanings and expressions of both grief phenomena and status transition reflect an ethic of collective good and duty-based interpersonal morality, but with acculturation causing a nascent and generational transition in such moral orientation: Fifth, status transition can entail a degree of liminality, out of bicultural dislocation and transformational variables such as education: Finally, a fundamental meaning of their Hindu-Canadian widowhood experience is its spiritual opportunity. Despite some diversity in their Hindu diaspora and sect, the explicated themes illustrate a common experience and meaning attendant on widowhood for the co-researchers. This study investigated a portion of the underlying cultural logic of widowhood and grief phenomena for these constituents of Hinduism, and highlighted their cultural constructions of meaning and experience, allowing us to improve our transcultural knowledge and understanding of the unique needs of this population in the field of Counselling and beyond. As a phenomenological study, themes and suppositions abstracted from this relatively small sample are limited beyond the precisely-defined context of its five co-researchers. Nevertheless, a counsellor might well benefit from the potential offered here for finer-grained assessments and therapeutic relationships with widows in our Hindu communities. / Education, Faculty of / Educational and Counselling Psychology, and Special Education (ECPS), Department of / Graduate

This study addresses the challenges of developing the intercultural competency of global leaders within the context of the U.S. multinational corporation (U.S.M.C.). This research seeks to examine how organizations develop managers capable of leading in a pluralistic work environment and the implications of this kind of learning on the current assumptions held by intercultural academia and the business community. The research approach was interdisciplinary: combining adult learning theory (self-directed and transformational learning), international business communication and leadership, systems thinking, organizational development and learning, and intercultural theory. The following questions were addressed: How is cultural competence developed, supported, and integrated by the U.S. multinational organization? What challenges and obstacles do organizations face in effectively developing globally competent leaders? How can the intercultural academic community help to facilitate cultural competency development in the organizational context? The study found that, although global leadership competency is largely undefined in organizations, the mandate "to be global" is pervasive. In spite of this, culture in the organizational context and its impact on leadership development and performance are not widely understood in U.S.M.C.s. Yet, the study also found that most organizations do not have programs of any kind that promote intercultural competency development. Reasons for this discrepancy centered mostly on lack of awareness and support at the highest levels in organizations, business cost justification, and the lack of collaboration among (corporate) departments as well as between organizations and the intercultural academic community. Two data sets were used to complete this research. The first set included members of the corporate business units of Learning and Development.(L&D), Human Resources (HR), and Diversity. The second data set was comprised of interculturalists who hailed from the academic community, the business community, or both.

No description available.

No description available.

Women's access to elective political office, an indicator of political inequality, was studied by surveying the percentage of women holding elective political positions in national legislatures of 74 countries. This study used a cross-sectional research design with multiple regression analysis.

No description available.

published_or_final_version / English Studies / Master / Master of Arts

The purpose of the present study was to examine the impact of "individualistic" vs. "collective" cultural patterns on the distribution of attachment patterns. Participants were English-speaking Anglo-American (n=70), Hispanic (n=70), and Asian (n=60) females.

Guided by Ogbu's cultural-ecological model of human development, this comparative study offers a comprehensive and explicit way of conceptualizing and measuring parenting within the cultural context. Multiple hypotheses are generated for the cross-cultural comparison of parenting styles in Asian Americans and European Americans. The study uses the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health survey data collected from a nationally representative sample of adolescents from grades 7 to 11. Logistic regression, ordered logit, and OLS regression models are employed to analyze ethnicity effects on parenting characteristics and adolescent competencies separately, adding adolescent gender, age, and parent education level as statistical controls. This study explains why family-based and individual-based parenting styles are culturally appropriate for competence acquisition in Asian-American and European-American families respectively. Findings of this study suggest that Asian parenting is largely motivated by the welfare of the family rather than the individual's needs. This pattern is seen in the high emphasis on education, different parental control levels over various behavior domains, characteristics of parental warmth and school involvement, and the way parents approach their adolescents. Greatly influenced by their cultural values about competencies necessary for success, Asian-American parents apparently inculcate the sense of filial obligation in adolescents with an emphasis on school success. European-American parents, on the other hand, develop the quality of self-expression in adolescents with an emphasis on self-esteem. Family-based parenting may be more advantageous to academic and behavioral competencies while individual-based parenting is relatively more effective for psychological adjustments. However, adolescents from both groups score reasonably well over measures of all competence variables. Thus, they may be all considered competent within their cultural contexts, with their differences echoing the fundamental diversity between the two parenting styles. This study presents some challenges to the traditional way of understanding and judging Asian parenting. A more complete scientific understanding of Asian Parenting would be useful for explaining competence acquisition in Asian-American adolescents. / Graduation date: 2003

Existing research on multilingual acquisition indicates that multilingual learners confront challenges not only in mastering new linguistic forms, but also in forming new identities, and especially when the languages concerned are socially and linguistically distant. This study shows that ethnic minority students in China (referred in particular as ‘ethnic multilingual learners’ or EMLs in this study) at universities can face more challenges than the ethnic majority, Han, when they choose to study English as their major subject. The Han’s content and method in English learning are straitjacketed upon them. The environment is unfamiliar to EMLs, and the EMLs are often regarded as “strangers” to the place. Their problems include the national examination system, medium of instruction, learning difficulties, psychological issues and cultural exclusion. The current educational policies in China intend to protect the educational rights of ethnic minorities, but ignore the role of education in inheriting and capitalizing their ethnic cultures. The current university curricula mainly focus on subject knowledge building and patriotic education. As a result, the “cultural self-consciousness” and “cultural capital” of EMLs are less emphasized and encouraged. Data are collected on two female ethnic minority students at Yunnan University of Nationalities (YUN) through ethnographic interview, autobiography, oral narrative, online chatting and field observation. It provides information at a micro level, on how the two students, who have successfully navigated through Chinese education system to the tertiary level, try their best to excel in the education system of YUN with English language as their major subject and construct their multiple identities, and what important factors are affecting such identity construction. The findings suggest that they negotiate their multiple identities successfully through their active engagements on and off the university campus to become legitimate participants in various “communities of practice”. These identities are shaped partly by their own heritage and partly by the present sociopolitical realities in China. Drawing mainly on poststructuralist and multicultural education theories, the study also examines the power relationship exercised in YUN and discusses the impact of this power relationship on the identities formation of the target informants. The national and local policies as well as the curriculum structures of YUN are analyzed to identify the implicit power relationship that mainly causes tensions to the education and language learning of EMLs. It is argued that multiculturalism, as a discourse of education, may help to ease the tension between being an ethnic minority and a Chinese national, and reduce the danger of assimilation and marginalization of these EMLs. To achieve the goal of multilingual education based on the notion of multiculturalism, a “collaborative” power relationship which facilitates the empowerment rather than disempowerment of EMLs should be the goal in China according to the framework of “ethnic diversity within national unity”. It is envisaged that with such multicultural mentality, EMLs will be more able to act not only as manpower for raising productivity of the country, but also as agents for social transformation and in the end become citizens of the cosmopolitan world. / published_or_final_version / Education / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy