The welfare state promises to moderate the duration and concentration of poverty. The authors ask how well this promise has been fulfilled in the United States and Britain from 1993 to 2003. They examine two aspects of poverty vulnerability during this period of welfare reform: (1) its persistence and associated risk factors and (2) the efficacy of social transfers. After accounting for measure…
As a generic and diversified pedagogy, cooperative learning (CL) reaches out to the field of intercultural education with an offer to establish a reciprocal relationship. After a short description of the diversity of CL and a brief exploration of the influence that culture has on learning, this paper depicts how the partnership between CL and intercultural education can help to create a cultura…
The notion of a knowledge society has led policy-makers and reformers to look for classroom practices that would lead to more productive learning in schools. Modern educational technologies are often thought to transform the traditional presentation-recitation mode of instruction into more participatory learning. This paper assumes that teaching for modern intercultural knowledge societies shou…
Complex Instruction (CI) is a comprehensive programme relating to curriculum development and instructional methodology, using multiple ability tasks and status interventions as key concepts. In 2006, at the end of a teacher training course, a group of primary school teachers decided to develop and experiment with original CI teaching units in their classrooms in Bologna and the surrounding prov…
Armenia is in the midst of major educational reforms in which teacher professional development is a key component. Much of the energy devoted to developing education in Armenia is targeted towards enhancing student-centred teaching, especially cooperative learning. This has become a significant challenge for many schools and teachers as they cope with understanding, learning and adapting these …
This paper describes the integration of cooperative learning (CL) activities into a graduate teacher education course, Collaborative Teaching in English as a Second Language (ESL). Because teachers and researchers have both identified discipline status and relationship issues as challenges to collaboration, this course focused on relational dynamics such as respect, trust, reciprocity, and appr…
Although very little research has been done on cooperative learning (CL) in New Zealand, international research is positive about the educational benefits of working in culturally diverse groups. This paper presents the findings of a research project examining New Zealand experiences with CL in multicultural groups. Data were collected via surveys and focus groups with domestic and internationa…
This paper describes a long-term research seminar, developed in 2001 by Hertz-Lazarowitz at the University of Haifa (UH). The goal of the seminar was to involve students in a meaningful, experiential and cooperative-interactive learning environment, based on topics relevant to their development as individuals coming from diverse collectives to the university campus, and to prepare them for life…
The main focus of this paper relates to the conceptualizations of human identity and intercultural relations needed for cooperative learning (CL) to occur. At one extreme, some have argued that the relation between different cultures should be conceptualized in terms of incommensurability. At the other extreme, a standardization and unification along with the trend of globalization is supported…
This paper examines educational practices in Spain and in particular Madrid. With this contextual frame as the starting point the following issues are discussed: the 'official' conceptualization of cultural diversity, educational policies and resolutions related to cultural diversity, and school programs and resources facilitated by educational authorities to address diversity. The analysis was…
The Portuguese approach to cultural diversity anchors on the principle of Interculturality; within the framework of mutual respect, it embraces the value and richness of diversity and dialogue. This intercultural approach is embedded in the paradigm of an equal value of all cultures and cultural miscegenation, moving thus far beyond a multicultural coexistence framework. This intercultural appr…
The present paper aims to briefly describe the manner in which intercultural education is perceived in the Romanian school system, as well as the solutions that are being proposed (mainly in the form of activities) for reconsidering and strengthening interculturality as a dimension of education. We report on the results of semi-structured questionnaires, a survey, and several case studies.
The aim of this paper is to share the conclusions of a recent ethnographic study carried out in Madrid from 2005 to 2008 to analyze the effects of a program implemented by the Community of Madrid, Spain, to address diversity in schools. The Program was given an English name - 'Welcome Schools' - and was aimed at preparing children recently arrived from outside Spain for entry into the regular s…
People use mental shortcuts to simplify the amount of information they receive from the environment. Heuristic reasoning can be included among these mental shortcuts. In general, heuristics is useful for making fast decisions and judgements, but in certain cases, it may lead to systematic errors because some relevant aspects presented in the given information are ignored. Heuristic reasoning is…
Diversity and intercultural awareness initiatives are increasingly common at institutions of higher education in the USA. Although students recognize and appreciate the diversity of their surroundings, studies show that intercultural interactions at the social level are lacking. This study focuses on how English language learners, multilingual students, and monolingual students of English perce…
Through a qualitative approach of narrative inquiry, this paper examines how Queacutebec's distinct society identity interacted with objectives of a Multicultural Education course in Montreal. The authors, one of whom was a teaching assistant in the course and the other a student in the course, interviewed seven students and the professor. The reasonable accommodation debates on how best to int…
One of the explicit goals of the 1996 welfare reform in the United States was to create conditions that would encourage marriage as a means of reducing poverty and welfare dependency. With the exception of a few notable studies that examine reliance on abusive partners and former partners, relatively little scholarly attention has been given to the contours of partnering after welfare reform.…
This article draws on interviews with foodiespeople with a passion for eating and learning about foodto explore questions of gender and foodie culture. The analysis suggests that while this culture is by no means gender-neutral, foodies are enacting gender in ways that warrant closer inspection. This article puts forward new empirical findings about gender and food and employs the concept o…
This research proposes and tests a new theoretical mechanism to account for a portion of the motherhood penalty in wages and related labor market outcomes. At least a portion of this penalty is attributable to discrimination based on the assumption that mothers are less competent and committed than other types of workers. But what happens when mothers definitively prove their competence and com…
This research investigates sociological ambivalence in negotiating care work in Japanese families. Women and their aging parents experience ambivalence based on conflicting norms of filial obligation, gender ideology, and cultural beliefs about the parentchild bond. Analysis of in-depth interview data showed ambivalence was based on (1) conflict between norms and cultural beliefs and (2) inter…