<p>The aim of this paper is in part to distinguish the ideas raised in the Swedish political debate on the new discrimination law in relation to protection of groups. Is protection by law against discrimination needed for the individual or the group? If it is needed for members of groups, are these groups viewed on as static or variable. Are there any conflicts present between group interests? We link these ideas to three different theoretical perspectives: multiculturalism, feminism and intersectionality and further examine the differences and contradictions between the perspectives represented by members of parliament. Drawing on the political debate and documents formulated within the government, this paper analyzes views on identity by group through the use of idea analysis. The main conclusions of this paper are the following. All theoretical views chosen are present within the debate. The representatives of feminism and multiculturalism call for distinctive needs. However, the philosophical debate current them between is not represented in the political debate on the discrimination law. The feminist concern stands without a multicultural opponent. The perspective on intersectionality is included in the debate but the understanding is quite incoherent. The government representatives choose to propagate for the principle of equal treatment instead of a variable view on groups.</p>

No description available.

<p>The purpose of this study has been to examine reading habits and the use of the library by pre­school teachers in a mainly multicultural community, and also explore to what extent activities in the local library are aimed at preschoolers.</p><p>The study used a sociocultural approach based on Vygotsky’s theories of learning and development and Söderbergh’s theory of early childhood language development, and was carried out during the summer 2009. The methodology used was both quantitative and qualitative, with a combination of questionnaires and interviews. Questionnaires were sent out to each section of the municipal pre­schools within the catchments area of the local public library in a multicultural suburb of Uppsala. Three short interviews were carried out with staff at the local and main library branches, as well as library staff at the County Council.</p><p>The results show that, although preschool teachers find reading important in their work, many teachers read spontaneously and/or sporadically. Many also find that visiting the library is difficult, seeing distance and the age of the children as factors preventing them from going. The library studied has little or no mutual activities with the preschools. General activities aimed at young children are story time in Swedish and several other languages as well as theatre and music events, book talks aimed towards parents visiting early year’s centres and, for preschools since 2008, theme bags involving popular topics such as nature, friends, and seasons. Conflicts exist between the control documents for the libraries and the present law of education in Sweden.</p>

Thesis (M.Com. (Industrial Psychology))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2007.

With its focus on immigration to the United States and development of American identity, Bharati Mukherjee’s fiction eludes literary categorization. It engages with the various contexts of multiculturalism, postcolonialism, and globalization, yet Mukherjee adamantly positions herself as an American author writing American literature. In this essay, I investigate the intersections between Mukherjee’s focus on the American character, culture, and people and developing theories and critical debates on globalization. Through Mukherjee’s works, we can see American identity in a state of flux, made possible by the immigrant and the relationships established between the transnational individual and America. Mukherjee’s immigrant characters challenge and expose American mythology from the American Dream of individual achievement to the canonical literature of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, rewriting them to show how foundational the immigrant is to American culture. I trace Mukherjee’s redefinition of the American character in and through three successive novels – Wife, Jasmine, and The Holder of the World. In Wife, Mukherjee challenges America’s adoption of multiculturalism because she considers it a means of essentializing ethnicity and both maintaining and enhancing difference. This multiculturalism, as part of America’s assumed principles of acceptance, alienates the protagonist Dimple from her immigrant community and the larger American culture, resulting in her violent attempts to force her Americanization. Jasmine continues to work against multiculturalism by explicitly inserting the immigrant into the American mythos, reshaping the Western literary canon to include the transnational individual and to assert the immigrant foundations of American ideology. Mukherjee expands her focus in Holder of the World as her protagonist Hannah travels to England, India, and the bourgeoning United States, rewriting The Scarlet Letter to suggest that globalizing forces have been present throughout American cultural history, not just at the end of the 20th century when critical debates began to flourish. Through analysis of these novels, I argue that Mukherjee’s reformulation of American character reasserts American ideals by including and developing with the rise of globalization theory.

L’objectif principal de cette recherche est d’analyser les politiques d’intégration des personnes issues de l’immigration développées par les entités fédérées belges et d’en expliquer les différences principales, et ce depuis la communautarisation de cette politique publique en 1980. Cette date marque également le début d’une période dans laquelle l’installation définitive des immigrés est graduellement acceptée. Marco Martiniello, dans un article publié en 1996, avançait que la coïncidence de la découverte de la question de l’intégration en Belgique, parallèlement au processus des réformes d’Etats consécutives, a donné lieu à des « combinaisons très particulières » (Martiniello, 1996 : 87). Ce constat, ainsi que la thèse selon laquelle le nationalisme ethno-culturel flamand et le nationalisme citoyen wallon seraient à l’origine de deux « philosophies » de l’intégration « qui se sont développées dans des directions opposées » sont à la base des interrogations qui constituent le fondement de notre travail. Notre these se situe ainsi dans le débat scientifique international sur les « modèles nationaux de l’intégration », initié par des auteurs, tels que Rogers Brubaker (1992), qui postulent que différents « idiomes culturels de la nation » sont à l’origine de différentes politiques d’accès à la citoyenneté. Cette différenciation des politiques d’intégration, en terme d’idées, a conduit à des catégorisations différentes. En Belgique, la catégorisation dominante des politiques d’intégration des entités fédérées est celle identifiant les politiques d’intégration en Belgique francophone comme proche d’un modèle « assimilationniste » ou « d’intégration individuelle » à la française, et celles menées en Flandre comme « multiculturalistes » et influencées par les Pays-Bas (Rea, 1993 & 1994 & 2000; Martiniello, 1995 & 1996 ; Magnette, 2000 ; Jacobs, 2001 ; Martens et Caestecker, 2001, Verlot, 2001 & 2004 ; Martiniello et Rea, 2004 ; Jacobs et Rea ; 2005). Plusieurs constats nous ont amenés à questionner cette interprétation dominante. Notre recherche a un premier objectif, d’ordre empirique, et un deuxième, d’ordre interprétatif. Premièrement, nous visons à décrire et à analyser l’élaboration des politiques d’intégration pour vérifier si ces politiques publiques sont effectivement guidées par des cadres de pensée différents. Nous avons cherché à observer où résident les principales différences entre les cadres de pensée, et si les politiques d’intégration sont caractérisées par de longues périodes de stabilité ou, au contraire, par des changements radicaux. Nous avons en effet démontré que les cadres de pensée guidant les politiques d’intégration des entités fédérées sont différents mais que les différences ne se situent pas au niveau de l’objectif d’homogénéité versus diversité culturelle mise en avant par l’assimilationnisme et le multiculturalisme, comme plus approprié pour arriver à une meilleure insertion sociale, économique et politique des immigrés et à la cohésion sociale, mais dans le degré d’interventionnisme d’Etat relatif à la dimension culturelle de l’intégration jugé nécessaire pour atteindre l’un ou l’autre de ces objectifs. Nous avons également mis en lumière que les politiques d’intégration en Belgique francophone sont caractérisées par une plus grande stabilité qu’en Flandre. Deuxièmement, une fois que nous avions déterminé comment nous pouvons catégoriser les différentes politiques d’intégration au regard de leurs cadres de pensée dominants, et que nous avions déterminé si elles sont caractérisées par une longue période de stabilité ou, au contraire, par des changements radicaux, nous avons tenté de répondre au deuxième objectif de cette recherche, à savoir l’interprétation des différences essentielles. La différence quant aux cadres de pensée qui guident les politiques d’intégration a été interprété par des caractéristiques institutionnelles, à savoir les différents systèmes de partis menant à une politisation différente de la politique publique en question, de même que le différent engagement des entités fédérées belges dans un processus de (sub-)nation building.

<p><font face="Times New Roman"> <p align="left">This study looks at the effect of a cross-cultural instructional approach on the learners&rsquo / conceptions of lightning and attitude towards science. It explored Basotho conceptions of lightning and thunder under the following themes: nature of lightning, protection against lightning, animalistic/humanistic behaviour of lighting and nature of wounds inflicted by lightning.</p> </font></p>

The purpose of this study has been to examine reading habits and the use of the library by pre­school teachers in a mainly multicultural community, and also explore to what extent activities in the local library are aimed at preschoolers. The study used a sociocultural approach based on Vygotsky’s theories of learning and development and Söderbergh’s theory of early childhood language development, and was carried out during the summer 2009. The methodology used was both quantitative and qualitative, with a combination of questionnaires and interviews. Questionnaires were sent out to each section of the municipal pre­schools within the catchments area of the local public library in a multicultural suburb of Uppsala. Three short interviews were carried out with staff at the local and main library branches, as well as library staff at the County Council. The results show that, although preschool teachers find reading important in their work, many teachers read spontaneously and/or sporadically. Many also find that visiting the library is difficult, seeing distance and the age of the children as factors preventing them from going. The library studied has little or no mutual activities with the preschools. General activities aimed at young children are story time in Swedish and several other languages as well as theatre and music events, book talks aimed towards parents visiting early year’s centres and, for preschools since 2008, theme bags involving popular topics such as nature, friends, and seasons. Conflicts exist between the control documents for the libraries and the present law of education in Sweden.

No description available.

Abstract This is a qualitative case study of how two teachers instill a new culture into immigrant children. I have used interview as one of my qualitative research methods and to make it a more informed assessment and to see the problem from more than one angle I have also used field study as a method. The purpose of this essay was to find out how two teachers work with immigrant children. I wanted to see how they work, how they integrate culture in their teaching and specific exercises they use to instill a new culture into the children. I also wanted to see what the literature says about integrating immigrant children into a new culture and if these particular teachers do as they are “supposed to”, or if they have found their own ways of teaching. I used a semi standardized interview to find out subjective specific ideas from the teacher’s point of view and tried to strike a balance from the objective side with a field study to actually get a glimpse of how the teachers work. The two teachers in my study are working in slightly different ways when they teach culture. They use a lot of the same ideas but their focuses vary a bit. The Canadian teacher’s focus lies on teaching the children a little bit of everything, as in a lot of different cultures, although she includes the Canadian culture in her work too. The Swedish teacher focuses more on the Swedish culture and tries to instill the children in that one first of all. She teaches the children about other cultures too, but mainly the Swedish one. Process of this qualitative case study has enlightened my understanding of cultural education because of its depth and clarity.