I have found that as a rule of thumb, when the majority of our learners in our science classrooms respond to expectation under examination conditions, the teacher's focus is on the minority who did not succeed. However, when only a minority of learners respond expectedly, then I feel teaching approaches have to be seriously questioned. My personal studies and readings in the education field, revealed a myriad of explanations and approaches surrounding the above problem. Literature has revealed that our greatest benefits can be achieved by successfully coping with the diversity of learners found in our science classrooms. There is no doubt that the problem is large, and thus a proper understanding of the problem is paramount to its resolution. This is where my study focuses, a case study that checks for gaps in science teachers' understanding of multicultural diversity in their classrooms and the impact of such understanding on classroom practice. Approaching the problem from an interpretive viewpoint within a social-constructive paradigm, the issue of multicultural diversity, especially in the field of science, is a "relatively" new concept in the South African context. Europeans and especially the Americans have at least forty years of experience in this field, their economy, low unemployment and advanced technology being a measure of their successes in multicultural science classrooms. At a theoretical level much of the American experiences do have direct relevance in our South African setting and is thus used throughout my study as a point of reference. The study used as its tools semi-structured interviews of 5 science teachers, (respondents), observations of a single lesson of each of the respondents and analysis of documents used in the observed lesson. The study was conducted in a middle to low socio-economic suburban secondary school of Kwazulu-Natal where science teachers' understandings of multicultural diversity was found to be somewhat traditional, simplistic and parochial. The study further revealed how a poor understanding of the issues of diversity amongst learners impacted on the teachers' abilities to successfully adapt the science curriculum and their teaching approaches to meet the needs of their diverse learners, and thus create equitable learning opportunities for all learners. Recommendations proposed in this study stem from the fact that though the respondents have some knowledge of the diversity in their science classrooms, their attempts to cope with the diversity based on currently available guidelines, viz. OBE, C2005 and the RNCS, still falls short of achieving equitable learning opportunities for all learners. Thus the study recommends serious attention to issues of multicultural science education with respect to language barriers and practice of appropriate teaching and learning methods. It also recommends appropriately designed training for both pre and in-service teachers and teacher educators. The study further recommends making science more meaningful by localising the Eurocentric curriculum and lastly, diversifying our teaching force to better reflect the increasingly diverse learner bodies. / Thesis (M.Ed.)-University of Durban-Westville, 2004.

The purpose of this work is to explore the roles of education and language in the creation of Japanese cultural identity. Education means first "schooling," but it also expands to include all cultural learning. In the attempt to unravel the inter-relationships of abstract concepts such as education, culture, identity, language and Japan, our understandings are necessarily influenced by our own education. Attempts by the educated elite of one culture to understand other cultures constitutes an intellectual conflict of interest that questions academic conventions, such as objectivity. In this work, I interweave expository and narrative chapters in an attempt to create a new "methodology" or "approach" to the study of culture, which I call cultural hermeneutics. The autobiographical chapters present an ongoing self-reflection upon my developing understanding of Japan. I have studied and taught in Japan for many years, and my increasing familiarity with things Japanese has gradually moved me beyond the boundaries of previous identities, and into spaces that once separated me from Japanese culture, involving me in the formation of new hybrid cultural identities. After an introductory chapter, the dissertation is split into three parts. The first part deals with the challenges of cultural hermeneutics as a methodology. The second part examines how the languages of Japan and foreign language education in Japan influence the formation of Japanese cultural identities. The third part explores how ideological debates, such as those about education, nationalism and internationalization, play a role in forming cultural identities. I conclude that identities are constantly contested by voices from both within and without the "imagined communities" of cultures. This contest is in progress even before we come to study "Culture." Because change is inherent to living cultures, and because lived experience is so abundant and complex, the knowledge we inherit about cultures is always incomplete, and full of prejudice and misunderstandings. We can never arrive at final understandings of cultures, not even our own. Nevertheless, it is important to continue conversations about cultures because they can lead us to form deepened understandings, and because these conversations ultimately contribute to greater self-understanding.

How should we understand the lived experiences of students in an English language program at a community college? This study seeks to explore and discuss the experiences of international students as they discover and constitute cultural identities in places between languages and cultures. It suggests a link between the vibrancy of these lived experiences and an English language education program which understands the value of the lived curriculum. The text includes the narratives of three international students and the interpreting of those conversations by the researcher. Also participating in the study are the voices of teachers and the voices of writers of theory, with the researcher working in the middle, experiencing at the same time a discovering and constituting of his own cultural identity. Building on the work of postcolonial scholars of cultural theory and anthropology, the study suggests a different kind of inter-national classroom and community, one which has implications for teachers as inter-national educators. In doing so, the thesis attempts to respond to "calls for attention to international dimensions of curriculum study" (Pinar 1995) and suggests an approach to creating a different kind of theoretical and conceptual frame for language education. It is hoped that the research will open doors to new questions and avenues of study and will help in furthering our understanding of curriculum.

This qualitative study explores the life history of four immigrants from diverse cultures, who have effectively navigated cultural differences and attained high-level leadership positions in Canada. The leaders’ life stories highlight key experiences that have influenced their identities, that is, the distinctive characteristics that are the source of their individual self definition and self-respect. The purpose of the study is to understand how social identity influences immigrants’ sense of personal agency and their capacity to shape individual potentialities into personal abilities. The study is situated in the leadership field within the multicultural Canadian context. It is grounded in my personal experiences as an Iranian-Canadian immigrant and guided by multidisciplinary literature on leadership, culture, identity, and motivation. Globalization, economic interdependence, and growing cross-national mobility have changed the face of the Canadian multicultural society. The clash of world-views, values, and life styles have become unavoidable, with arguably all Canadians experiencing the feeling of being “other” in their interactions with members of other cultures. Within the new Canadian mosaic, cultural consciousness is on the rise leading to increasing ethnic distinctiveness. It has become a factor distinguishing individuals by their differences as well as grouping them together by their similarities. Living in a multicultural environment as an immigrant has implications on issues of identity, but these implications have not yet been thoroughly explored. Much of existing cultural research is based on national orientation and contentious dualism (e.g., individualism and collectivism). But, cultures are dynamic and diverse. Understanding cultural constructs at the individual rather than the national level demonstrates the complexity and variability of individuals in the exercise of personal agency and the construction of identity. Through sharing and understanding the experience of four immigrants in leadership positions across diverse organizations, researchers may learn about immigrant challenges and ways these four individuals reconcile differences and conflicting cultural values. The resulting practical implication is (a) increased self and social awareness for immigrants with high potential for leadership, (b) enhanced multicultural knowledge for current organizational leaders, and (c) improved interpersonal relationships within a broad multicultural community.

The purpose of this study was to examine the role of sociocultural factors in the occurrence of pathological eating attitudes and behaviours by determining the relationship between acculturation to Canada, as a Western culture , and eating attitudes and behaviours in a nonclinical sample of female Chinese and Caucasian university students. In addition , as an exploratory goal any possible relationship between acculuturative stress and eating attitudes and behaviours was also explored. One hundred female Caucasian and 131 female Chinese undergraduate students were recruited from the University of British Columbia. Each subject was asked to complete a Demographic Questionnaire as well as the 26 item Eating Attitudes Test (EAT; Garner, Olmsted, Bohr, & Garfinkel, 1982). Additionally , the Chinese subjects were asked to complete the Suinn-Lew Asian Self-Identity Acculturation Scale (SL-ASIA; Suinn, Rickard-Figueroa, Lew, & Vigil, 1987) and the 24 item SAFE Acculturative Stress Scale (SAFE; Mean, Padilla, & Maldonado, 1987).

This study investigated the effects of an experimenter-designed cross-cultural training program on counsellor empathic response, attending behaviour and level of anxiety during interviews with a culturally dissimilar client. A review of the literature indicates that counsellor effectiveness and level of anxiety may be affected when a client is perceived as culturally dissimilar. Research documenting the success of cross-cultural training as a method of increasing counsellor effectiveness during live client interviews is meager. / Thirty-one white graduate students in counselling participated in this research. Counsellor trainees were randomly assigned to treatment/no-treatment conditions. Following the 11-hour treatment program, all 31 counsellors conducted videotaped interviews with one black and one white female coached client. Trained judges who maintained an interrater agreement of .87 rated excerpts of the counsellors' performance on the empathy and attending behaviour variables; a self-report measure of anxiety was employed. / The overall results of the multivariate analysis of variance indicated no significant difference between treatment and control groups when the three dependent variables were considered as a set. However, the univariate analysis was significant for levels of anxiety during interviews with the black client (p = .01114); counsellors in the treatment group experienced lower levels of anxiety than those in the control group. Modest gains in empathy resulted from crosscultural training. A significant correlation was found between empathy and attending behaviour (p = .0001). / Implications for the cross-cultural training of counsellors are discussed. The mixed findings of this study indicate the need for further research in this area.

This study introduces a different kind of collaborative research whereby two researchers co-design and co-conduct the research and draw their own conclusions from the shared data. The data, gathered using qualitative tools such as surveys, questionnaires, and interviews, was further enriched as a result of having two individuals from different backgrounds interpreting the data. The data collected from 14 university students who were once identified as ESL students in British Columbia, Canada, were transcribed then analyzed using NUD*IST qualitative computer software. The focus was on their perceptions of ESL programs, immigration process, and socio-cultural factors that contributed to their academic and social integration success. Participants' own words centered mostly on their relationships with families, friends, and ESL teachers as major factors contributing to their success. ESL programs served as their safety nets as the majority suggested that their journey into social and academic mainstreams had undesirable effects on their experiences. Three major factors were identified as having both helped and hindered their adaptation and integration into Canadian school and society: family influence, bicultural identities, and segregation. Results from this study suggest a number of theoretical and practical implications. First, this study need to be replicated in different contexts using a longitudinal approach to document how immigrant ESL students construct their experiences within and outside of school overtime. Secondly, research need to aim at understanding the tension between students' home and school cultures and encourage involvement and collaboration between ESL students, parents, and teachers. In addition, examining how ESL students interact with their mainstream counterparts may provide helpful guidelines for schools to foster an environment whereby unity and support exist between the two groups. This study concludes with both researchers' reflection on each other's thesis. This step led to a critical reexamination of their interpretation. Differences and similarities emerged from this process. The similarities both researchers shared provided a greater degree of validity and reliability to this project. On the other hand, the differences that emerged served to enrich the data by providing two perspectives to the same problem.

The primary purpose of this study was to test the attribution theory of motivation cross-culturally by comparing performance and attribution patterns on inductive rule learning in two different cultures (Canadian & Korean) within the framework of collectivism vs. individualism. Two hypotheses were formed: 1) Korean and Canadian students would show differences in attribution patterns following success or failure outcome due to different cultural emphasis. 2) Given the effort attribution of failure, Korean students would perform more accurately on the reasoning task than Canadian students, and given higher ability attribution of success, Canadian students may perform better or at least equally as well as Korean students. A Total of 120 grade seven students (60 Canadian and 60 Korean) from a middle-class community from Korea and Canada participated in the computerized experimental tasks. The research design involved two culture groups (Canadian and Korean) and three outcome feedback (control, failure, and success), as independent variables, and the number of instances, response rate and accuracy on the inductive reasoning tasks as dependent variables. Findings of this study indicate that Canadian culture may not be defined as more individualistic than Korean culture. The study results did not provide a clear cut distinction of collectivistic vs. individualistic cultures between Korean and Canadian cultures. In terms of attribution patterns, both culture groups showed similar patterns, but different from Weiner's theory of motivation, not only effort but also ability attribution influenced positively the accuracy of performance on the subsequent task upon receiving failure feedback. Given failure feedback, Korean grade seven students performed better, while Canadian counterparts' performance level on the subsequent task deteriorated with failure feedback. Further research on cross-cultural study of attribution theory has been suggested along with educational implications.

The primary purpose of the present study was to investigate the joint effects of culture and attribution of outcome feedback on reasoning performance. This study attempted to address four major research questions: (a) Do Canadian and Chinese students have different cultural values and causal attribution patterns? (b) Do pre-experimental individual differences in causal attribution patterns lead to differences in Canadian and Chinese students' inductive reasoning performance? (c) Does attribution of outcome feedback affect Canadian and Chinese students' inductive reasoning performance? (d) Do Canadian and Chinese students conduct deductive reasoning differently as a function of outcome feedback and reasoning task contents? A total of 120 college students (60 Canadian and 60 Chinese) performed three phases of computerized experimental tasks. The research design involved 2 types of culture groups (Canadian and Chinese) under 3 conditions of outcome feedback (success, failure, and control) as two independent variables. The dependent variables observed were the number of instances used or correct responses made and response time, when possible. In terms of culture differences, Canadian students appear to be distinct and articulate about the matters of socio-cultural values, while Chinese students are relatively less distinct and articulate. When making attribution for other people's success, both Canadian and Chinese students held internal factors (i. e., good effort and high ability) as responsible. When accounting for other people's failure, Canadian students picked controllable factors (i.e., lack of effort), while Chinese students picked both controllable and uncontrollable factors (i.e., largely lack of effort and occasionally difficult task) as the reasons. However, following the success outcome feedback about their own reasoning performance, Canadian students emphasized mostly high ability and, occasionally, effort as the reasons, while Chinese students picked mostly good luck and, occasionally, high ability. Given the failure outcome feedback about their own task performance, Canadian students attributed to lack of effort and bad luck as causes, while Chinese students exclusively picked lack of effort as the explanation. Chinese subjects' inductive and deductive reasoning performances remained relatively unswayed by success or failure outcome feedback, whereas Canadian subjects' reasoning performance remained good only when success feedback was received. When failure feedback was provided, Canadian subjects' reasoning performances deteriorated and remained poor throughout the experiment. While Chinese students' reasoning performance is not predictable from their low-ability attribution of other people's failure outcome, Canadian students' reasoning performance is highly predictable; that is, the more they attributed others' failure to low ability, the faster they completed the culture-fair inductive reasoning task. On the other hand, when making attribution based on their own experience, given success feedback, Canadian students attributed their performance to their high ability. Given failure feedback, Canadian students attributed their performance to their lack of effort, with improved performance commensurable to their verbal causal attribution. The present findings indicate that Canadian and Chinese college students showed differences in causal attribution patterns, depending on when they explain others' success/failure experiences or their own, and further that upon receipt of failure outcome feedback, Canadian students' reasoning performance deteriorated, while Chinese students' performance remained insensitive to success or failure outcome feedback. Further fine-grained analyses of such causal attribution patterns interacting with outcome feedbacks and cognitive performance needs some more careful studies.

This thesis examines the problem of disordered eating based on ethnographic fieldwork in emergency shelters, soup kitchens, and eating disorder support groups, as well as interviews with medical professionals, and other residents of a Canadian city. This person-centered ethnography that explores the eating behaviors of not only those who have been diagnosed with 'eating disorders', but also those who are unable at times to provide themselves with food reveals that in spite of a prevailing discourse that determines eating as an independent act, food choices and eating patterns are dependent social 'works of the imagination' affected and shaped by social determinants and cultural norms. From eating disorders to type 2 diabetes and 'food as gift,' the lived experience of individuals indexes the ways in which food, power, and identity are enmeshed and embedded within culture. This critical perspective argues that disordered eating is socially and culturally produced and reproduced. / vi, 182 leaves ; 29 cm.