ABSTRACT CULTURAL IDENTITY, VOICE, AND AGENCY IN POST-SECONDARY GRAPHIC DESIGN EDUCATION: A COLLECTIVE CASE STUDY by Larry M. Stultz This study investigates areas of conflict between students’ cultural identities and the educational environment established and maintained by their faculty and school. It analyzes the usefulness and value of personal creative expression in the classroom and how treatment of cultural identity and performance influences student persistence and success. Four theoretical frameworks ground this study and comprise the majority of the relevant literature. The inquiry is framed by theories in curriculum, performance, cultural difference, and symbolic interaction. Three purposely selected students participated in individual case studies, and the data from interviews, classroom observation, and examples of student work were subjected to both unique and collective case analysis. Three identifiable areas inform the collective interpretation: socialization, self-view, and agency, with the latter seeming most dynamic. Very significant are the students’ disparate socialization goals: assimilation, acculturation, and syncretism or compromised coexistence. The problem of self-view, or naming, is also useful. The identity and voice exhibited by these three students create ways in which they are viewed and treated by their peers and their faculty. Most importantly, the students’ experiences and cultural capital are shown to have agency, and agency is a signifier in looking into student success. This study reveals that while it is up to the students to utilize experiential agency, it is up to educators and institutions to consider the role of identity, voice, and agency in developing and maintaining an educative environment.

This research focuses on the transition of Bahraini students to a Western medical university which has been ‘transplanted’, with its values and context of practice, to the culture of Bahrain. A socio-cultural model of Communities of Practice was adopted as a theoretical framework in this research for it linked in well with the personal context of this study which suggested that students’ transition could be related to the practices in Bahraini schools associated with science and English education, as well as general school pedagogy. Therefore, the aim of this study was to explore how different participants perceive the role of school practices, as well as science and English education in transition. In order to explore these different understandings, a case study methodology was adopted and insights into the practices of students’ school and university community were gained through the use of focus group and individual interviews, as well as a descriptive questionnaire. The data from the qualitative investigation was analysed deductively under the three themes of science background knowledge, the English language and school pedagogy, while the questionnaire data was subject to univariate analysis based on mean responses. The key findings indicated high levels of confidence in students’ science base and approaches to study, which enabled the students to take a number of strategic actions in order to move through the educational outcomes of the university programme. In terms of the English language, a compromised foreign language (L2) proficiency caused by inadequate school practices was perceived not to play an important role in the transition process, which suggested a diminished role of L2 in transitions in the context of language change. As far as school pedagogy is concerned, whilst all participants at the secondary level agreed that general memorisation-based pedagogy in secondary schools could play a negative role in the transition, the participants at the university revealed that rote-based approaches to study formed in school could also be strategically used at university. Hence, the findings from this research have specific implications for the model of Communities of Practice and suggest future work within this theory regarding the role of students’ individual agency. These findings also suggest a new understanding of transitions in the context of language and culture change.

Interethnic relationships are increasingly common in society, yet interethnic couples also have a higher divorce rate compared to intraethnic couples. Given these facts, it is important that researchers identify factors that contribute to couples commitment in interethnic relationships, but to date, such research is rare. This thesis investigated the factors that contribute to the commitment of Chinese interethnic relationships. In order to do that, a qualitative study and a quantitative study were conducted. Johnson s commitment framework was found suitable in the qualitative study. Thus a cultural model that incorporated Johnson s personal commitment and a new construct couple cultural identity was established for the quantitative study to find whether love, satisfaction (i.e. dyadic adjustment) and couple cultural identity (i.e. acculturation to the partner and similarity of couple s individualism/collectivism) would predict personal commitment and whether each variable would account for unique variance in personal commitment of the participants. The quantitative study found significant relationships between love and personal commitment, satisfaction and personal commitment of Chinese interethnic couples. Also, couple cultural identity was important for women s personal commitment. These findings suggest that partners in interethnic relationships may define personal commitment in different ways with men emphasising love and satisfaction, and women emphasising love and acculturation to their partner.

This paper presents a pedagogical inquiry on the impending need for teachers of underserved students to be conscious of their own cultural identity and language ideologies. The paper also inquires on the possible effect such realization has on teachers’ practices, specifically on their usage of humanizing pedagogy in their classrooms. From a Freirean standpoint three bilingual, Latina teachers were invited to enter into a dialogue in order to identify each other’s cultural identity, language ideologies and to make evident how this may have an impact or how it influences their teaching practices. Using data from interviews and other informal interactions the article examines and argues the need for teachers to enter in this type of reflective and conscientious dialogue in order to learn from each other ways to include and increase humanizing practices in their classrooms. Several themes that surface in this inquiry are 1) the importance of teachers becoming aware of their own cultural identity and language ideologies, 2) the need for formal opportunities in which teachers explore these matters in order to build a community that causes change in the educational system, and 3) the presence, if any, of humanizing practices in these teachers’ classrooms and how they can influence each other to improve the opportunities they provide for their students to succeed. / text

Processes and patterns of migration on a global scale have changed in profound ways during the last two decades (Smith and King, 2012). In the European context, this is exemplified by transformations to the traditional mobility patterns from East to West Europe (Koser and Lutz, 1998), with migrants more likely to be involved in temporary circular and transnational mobility (Favell, 2008). Since the end of the Second World War, historical and political events in Europe have facilitated the mobility of ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe to Germany. Subsequently, the fall of the Iron Curtain has permitted unrestrained East-West movements, which resulted in mass migrations towards the West and diaspora fragments in the East. However, after settlement in the West, ethnic Germans have also been absorbed within wider temporary and transnational movements (Koser, 2007). Within this context, this thesis examines the post-migratory lives of three generations of Transylvanian Saxons in Germany by exploring the cultural, social, economic and political dimensions of this community. This thesis aims to contribute to on-going academic debates about diasporas by explicitly responding to Hoerder s (2002) call for more studies on ethnic German diasporas. It shows that Transylvanian Saxons, who relocated to the ancestral homeland, do not disrupt identities and lives forged in diaspora, but rather, they negotiate complex identities and belongings in relation to both home and homeland . It reveals a double diaspora and the necessity to perceive identity and diaspora as dynamic processes and constantly evolving in relation to time, space and place. This double diasporic allegiance in the case of the Transylvanian Saxons suggests interrogating the formation of a return diaspora and its importance for processes of international migration.

This study uses a postcolonial perspective to examine the construction of cultural identities in second generation South Asian women. It critiques traditional strategies of immigrant incorporation, including assimilation and cultural pluralism, for their androcentric and essentialist tendencies. It was found that the women constructed a cultural hybrid identity, and using Homi Bhabha's notion of third space, I discuss the process of how this hybrid identity is constructed. A phenomenological approach, in which the subjective voices of the participants are privileged, was used to analyze nine interviews for themes relating to the construction of a hybrid identity.

O maior problema do professor na Educação de Jovens e Adultos é lidar com a multiplicidade de saberes e de modos de apreensão da realidade: os alunos chegam à escola com níveis variados de letramento e com um saber forjado por outros sistemas de cognição e de compreensão do mundo. Assim, este trabalho de pesquisa pretendeu estudar a relação entre letramento, escritas da memória e identidade cultural. O objetivo principal foi verificar até que ponto a prática pedagógica com escritas da memória contribui para o letramento de adultos oriundos de culturais orais e que tiveram pouco contato com a palavra escrita. Partiu-se da suposição de que o trabalho com as escritas da memória propiciasse o sentimento de pertencimento e levasse o aluno a construir uma imagem de si mesmo como sujeito-autor de sua escrita, compreendendo-a como prática social significativa. Com efeito, ao relembrarmos o passado, confrontamos valores, crenças e sentimentos do presente com valores, crenças e sentimentos do passado. Vozes, imagens, sons, cheiros, o passado nos assalta, e ressignificamos sentidos há muito perdidos. O espaço da memória é também o espaço da ressignificação: o espaço de construir e reconstruir representações e identidades, de acordo com os modos como, ao nos fazermos sujeitos da memória, nos ancoramos ou nos engatamos em um e não outro discurso, em um e não outro sentido. Ou seja, construímos representações do passado de acordo com as representações que fazemos do presente, e tanto umas quanto as outras são atravessadas pelas representações social e historicamente construídas.Há como que um liame ou um entrecruzamento de representações, a partir do qual forjamos uma identidade que é individual e ao mesmo tempo coletiva.Nesse movimento, negociamos significados e nos inserimos no jogo das configurações e reconfigurações das relações de poder que se consubstanciam no e pelo discurso.A metodologia desta pesquisa dividiu-se em três etapas: a aplicação de sequência didática abordando o gênero textual autobiografia e suas especificidades; coleta de dados (textos escritos pelos alunos, fichas de acompanhamento do processo ensino-aprendizagem, questionários de perfil sócio-econômico e cultural); por fim, a análise qualitativa dos dados.Fundamentaram esta pesquisa os conceitos de autonomia (FREIRE, 2002), agência (BAZERMAN, 2006, 2011, 2015; KLEIMAN, 2006), autoria (POSSENTI, 2002; TFOUNI, 2005, 2010), letramento ideológico (STREET, 2014) e memória coletiva (HALBWACHS, 1990; BOSI, 1979, 2003). Concluiu-se que, ao fazer da palavra escrita uma forma de reviver sua experiência por meio do discurso da memória, o aluno ressignifica a prática letrada, reconceitualiza-a: a palavra escrita lhe pertence e ele é pertencido por ela. / A teacher in Youth and Adult Education major problem is dealing with the multiplicity of knowledge and multiple ways of apprehending reality: students come to school with various levels of literacy and knowledge forged by other cognitive systems and ways of understanding the world. Thus, this research aimed at studying the relationship between literacy, written memory and cultural identity. The main objective was to determine to what extent pedagogical practices with written memory contribute to literacy of adults that came from oral culture or had little contact with the written word. We started from the assumption that the work with written memory propitiates the feeling of belonging and leads the students to build an image of themselves as a subject-author of their writing, understanding it as a significant social practice. Indeed, by remembering the past, we confront values, beliefs and feelings of this with values, beliefs and feelings of the present. Voices, images, sounds and smells; the past assaults us, and resignifies meanings long lost. Memory space is also the space of ressignification: the space where we construct and reconstruct representations and identities, according to the ways by which, as we becomea subject of memory, we \"anchor\" or we \"engage\" in one instead of another discourse, in one meaning instead of another. In other words, we build representations of the past according to the representations we make of the present, both contaminated by representations socially and historically constructed. There is a sort of bond or an intersection of representations, from which we forge an identity that is individual and collective at the same time. In this movement, we negotiate meanings and we insert ourselves into the set of configurations and reconfigurations of power relations that are embodied in and through discourse.The methodology of this research was divided into three stages: the application of didactic sequence addressing the genre \"autobiography\" and its specifics; data collection (texts written by students, monitoring reports of the teaching-learning process, socio-economic and cultural profile questionnaires); and last but not least, qualitative data analysis. We based this research upon the concepts autonomy (FREIRE, 2002), agency (BAZERMAN, 2006, 2011, 2015; KLEIMAN, 2006), authorship (POSSENTI, 2002; TFOUNI, 2005, 2010), ideological literacy (STREET, 2014) and collective memory (HALBWACHS, 1990; BOSI, 1979, 2003). We came to the conclusion that, by turning the written word into a way of reliving their experience through the memory discourse, students reframe literacy practice and reconceptualize it: the written word belongs to them and they are belongedby it.

Esta Dissertação insere-se na área de Estudos Comparados de Literaturas de Língua Portuguesa e tem por objetivo estabelecer uma analogia entre as narrativas de duas escritoras que viveram na diáspora. Para tanto, examinaremos Desencanto e Cais-do- Sodré, do livro Cais-do-Sodré te Salamansa1, e Thonon-les-Bains, do livro Ilhéu dos Pássaros2, ambos de Orlanda Amarílis, e A Hora da Estrela3, de Clarice Lispector. Partindo dessas obras literárias, pretendemos mostrar como a realidade da mulher migrante encontra pontos comuns mesmo em países tão distantes como Brasil e Cabo Verde, e, ainda, sempre sob a ótica de gênero, as múltiplas identidades que se estabelecem quando se está em situação de diáspora. Destacar-se-á de cada conto de Orlanda Amarílis apenas um núcleo temático (diáspora e identidade cultural, memória na diáspora e gênero, respectivamente), que será trabalhado comparativamente à narrativa de Clarice Lispector, A hora da estrela, evitando-se, dessa forma, que haja redundância ou repetições de temas. / This dissertation is inserted in the Comparative Studies of Portuguese Language Literature area, and it has as objective to establish an analogy between the narratives of two writers who lived a diaspora. To do so, we will examine Desencanto e Cais-do- Sodré, from the title Cais-d -Sodré te Salamansa[1], and Thonon-les-Bains, from the title Ilhéu dos Pássaros[2], both by Orlanda Amarilis, and A Hora da Estrela[3], by Clarice Lispector. Starting from this literary titles, we intend to show how migrant womens reality find common issues even between such distant countries as Brazil and Cape Verde, and, still, always under gender view, the multiple identities established when someone is under a diaspora situation. From each Orlanda Amarilis tale only one thematic group (diaspora and cultural identity, diaspora memory and gender, respectively) will be highlighted, and worked comparatively to Clarisse Lispectors narrative, A Hora da Estrela, to avoid, in this manner, redundancy or themes repetition.

This thesis investigates and analyses the child-rearing patterns of two groups of Japanese parents living in Perth, Western Australia. The first group, the 'Stayers have migrated to Australia as a couple with the intention of making Australia their home and occasionally visiting Japan with their children. The second group, the Sojourners' are in Australia for a fixed period of time, generally 4-5 years, as a result of the company requirements expected of the husband/father. Their time in Australia is an interlude, an experience, an opportunity for the whole family.The research compares a number of case studies of families in both groups. In depth interviews following detailed questionnaires provide the data about the child-rearing practices as expressed by mothers and fathers in the two groups. Parental expectation of children's private and public behaviour, as well as their relevance to gender and age are explored.The findings from the survey suggested that the qualities held to be the most important for the Stayer group were those qualities that would be useful for their children to be successful in Australia. Qualities such as independence, assertiveness and using initiative were rated as being more desirable to develop for the children in the Stayer group than those children in the Sojourner group. Some Stayer families with older children had socialised their children to operate successfully in both cultures. The findings also suggested that the qualities held to be important for the Sojourner group were consistent with the qualities that the Japanese view as being valued for Japanese in Japan.

Global diasporas caused by wars carry many streams of people - in the 1970s one of these streams contained orphans from Vietnam delivered to white parents in the West. On arrival, the social expectation was that these children would blend seamlessly into the culture of their adoptive parents. Now some adoptees, as adults, reflect on their lives as 'Asian' or racially 'Other' children in white societies, charting the critical points in their maturation. This thesis interrogates their life histories to explore the role of birth-culture in the self-definition of people removed from that culture at birth or in childhood. Thirteen adult adopted Vietnamese participants were interviewed. These interviews provided qualitative data on issues of racial and cultural identity. These data were developed and analysed, using a framework drawn from symbolic interactionism and cultural studies, in order to reveal the interpersonal dynamics in which people were involved, and the broader cultural relations that sustained them. The findings reveal that in early childhood the adopted Vietnamese identity process was shaped by a series of identifications with, and affirmations of, sharing their adoptive parents racial and cultural identity. Such identifications were then challenged once the adoptees entered society and were seen by others as different. The participants' attempts to locate a secure sense of self and identity within the world they are placed in are disturbed by numerous uncertainties surrounding racial and cultural difference. One of the most crucial uncertainties is the adopted Vietnamese knowledge about their cultural background. While most felt they lacked positive knowledge about Vietnam and racial diversity, their sense of identity was unsettled by experiences with racism and negative cultural stereotypes throughout their late childhood to adolescence. As their recognition and acceptance of their difference develops in adulthood, they experience a degree of empowerment due to their being able to access more knowledge about their cultural background and a greater appreciation of racial diversity. Many participants have formed closer ties with other people born in Vietnam, most notably other adoptees; most returned to visit Vietnam. The thesis concludes that those adoptees who were able to develop an understanding of the Vietnamese and other backgrounds to their complex identities, tended to be more integrated as adults than those who either rejected or were unable to come to terms with their Vietnamese ancestry.