Thesis (M.A.)--University of North Carolina Wilmington, 2009. / Title from PDF title page (January 13, 2010) Includes bibliographical references (p. 65-73)

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2008.

Thesis (M.Ed.)--Regis University, Denver, Colo., 2010. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on Jun. 30, 2010). Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2007. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Whenever two or more people from different cultures interact in an educational environment learning and teaching can be affected either positively or negatively. The study sought to establish the link between intercultural differences and optimal teaching and learning environments. The aim of the study was therefore to enhance teaching and learning environments through improved intercultural understanding. The research was based on the qualitative approach. The research design that was used in the execution of the study was a case study. The data collection methods that were used were focus group discussions, interviews and observation. The study found that there are some intercultural experiences that either enhance or inhibit educational equality and quality. These are medium of instruction (English Language), availability and accessibility of learning resources and parental support. It was also concluded that acts of discrimination alone cannot affect the performance of learners but, rather, a combination of other intercultural influences play a role. Moreover, the study found that language can be used as a tool to promote respect for humanity as it was singled out as one of the factors that inhibit respect for others. In promoting tolerance towards each other, the study found that negative self-esteem, seen mostly with the under privileged learners, affects negatively their ability in tolerating each other. In addition, encouraging participation of learners in sport and group activities emerged as some of the pursuits that can promote tolerance amongst learners from different cultural backgrounds. The strategies to enhance optimal teaching and learning that were revealed by the study are: repetition of lessons by teachers; motivating and appreciating learners; monitoring classroom dynamics; creating social clubs; training teachers on cultural diversity (inclusive of communication); acknowledging, valuing and celebrating cultural differences; declaring English as an elective subject; unlimited access to the internet and library; and promoting parental involvement in the education of their children.

Currently, in many high schools throughout Canada and the United States, English teachers have been developing literature curricula to meet the needs of their culturally diverse students. However, because in most cases these educators have not had at their disposal the interpretative techniques of such postcolonial literary theorists as Edward Said and Gayatri Spivak, they have been relying, instead, for their reading strategies upon traditional literary theories. Unfortunately, when teachers employ New Critical, archetypal, feminist, or reader-response methods of literary analysis in their reading of multicultural literature, they are often unaware of the Eurocentric biases contained within these perspectives. This lack of understanding of their theoretical frame of reference can then lead teachers to encourage their students to accept uncritically problematic representations of various cultural groups as they encounter these representations in their literary texts. Postcolonial literary theory, on the other hand, encourages students to problematize Eurocentric representations of imperialism’s Others. The advantage to students who use postcolonial reading strategies in order to become aware of the different ways in which people at the margins and centres of empire view each other is that they can thus attain higher levels of multicultural literacy by performing more sophisticated and complex interpretations of their texts than they might have done using traditional interpretative approaches. At the same time, the students’ use of postcolonial reading strategies can help them to become more effective intercultural communicators as they cross cultural borders by carrying out collaborative responses to literary texts with students whose heritage differs from their own. This project, therefore, involves a critique of existing conceptions of the high school multicultural literature curriculum by comparing their key features with those of the postcolonial conception. The principal focus of the investigation is upon how the postcolonial approach can help students to understand, more effectively than can traditional conceptions, the necessarily dynamic and heterogeneous textual representations of dominant and subaltern cultures to be found in both Eurocentric and postcolonial literary texts. / Education, Faculty of / Curriculum and Pedagogy (EDCP), Department of / Graduate

M.A. (Information Science) / The potential formative value of children's literature has repeatedly been proven by research. A child's perception of society is shaped early and the beneficial contribution of literature in bringing about a framework of awareness and understanding about society, cannot be denied. South African society is pre-eminently multicultural - a fact which is reflected in the rich diversity of ethnic groups, cultures, languages and creeds. A given political policy compelled the different ethnic groups in South Africa to live in separate areas, under divergent circumstances. This resulted in a deeply divided South African society in which alienation, distrust and conflict still prevail. However, fundamental changes are occurring in political, socio-economic and educational spheres. Amidst all of these changes, the South African child has to establish and enhance a cultural identity of its own. Secondly, a broadened South African identity must be attained. There is doubt whether the children of South Africa are equipped to cope with this new phase into which South African society is entering. The value of multicultural children's literature and.its potential to bring about understanding and acceptance with regard to the rich cultural diversity in South African society, offers a field of research which up to now has not been explored in South Africa...

Focusing on consumer trust in science, this dissertation explores the societal and ecological factors that can influence consumer’s science denial tendency, and also explores how to leverage consumers’ input with crowdsourcing to rate scientific article veracity and hence create a trustworthy media environment. In the first chapter, I find that lower religious diversity in a region, or an individual’s experience, predicts lower religious tolerance and greater science denial. The belief that my religion trumps other religions precipitates the attitude that it trumps science too. I find supporting evidence from seven studies using U.S. mobile location data, census data, worldwide archival data, national surveys conducted in different countries with participants from different religious groups, and experiments. In the second chapter, I propose a novel crowdsourcing method to leverage the input of general consumers into the fact-checking efforts. I validate the use of similarity judgments to facilitate unbiased consumer responses and prove that asking lay consumers to rate the similarity between scientist-rated and unrated articles provide an unbiased and efficient way to scale up veracity ratings of scientific articles. In order to increase consumer trust in science, I argue that policy makers should emphasize religious integration and heterogeneity in communities. In order to build a better news environment with more trustworthy scientific information, I argue that news companies, news platforms, and third-party fact-checkers can engage general consumers’ input by asking the right questions to get unbiased and reliable responses.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science, 1982. / Bibliography: leaves 891-1267. / by Donald George Morrison. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science, 1982.

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