A Path to Understanding: A case study in cultivating empathy through communication and cultural barriers

Broadly defined as the combination and/or integration of participation in a community service activity with formal learning and reflection (Clark, 1999; Reising, Allen, & Hall, 2006; Tucker, McCarthy, & Lenk, 1998; Yan & Rodgers, 2006), service-learning activities range from voluntary student organized initiatives to mandatory graduation requirements. Within the field of educational research, there is a general consensus that service-learning experiences contribute to positive outcomes for both college students and the surrounding community (Helm-Stevens & Griego, 2009; Prentice & Robinson, 2007; Reising, Allen, & Hall, 2006). Few studies investigate the shared relationship between college students and community partners participating in service-learning project together. This qualitative study investigated three service-learning projects of college students and community organizations who attend and partner with a large private university in the northeastern United States. Each case study used several sources of evidence including interviews with college students and community partners, as well as observations of their relationship within the context of the service-learning project. Student reflections and field notes were also incorporated and triangulated. Data was transcribed and analyzed using NVivo 9.0 data analysis software. Findings of this study demonstrated how the ways in which shared relationships between college students and community partners who participate together in a service-learning experience are impacted by the established pretenses of the service-learning goals. Additionally, the level of orientation the students receive, the organizational understanding of service-learning, the opportunities for reflection, and overall communication affect the overall relationships. A typology for conceptualizing service-learning relationships is offered to help understand the dynamics of the relationships. Focusing a study on the shared relationships of all service-learning participants at the same time provided valuable findings that will inform future service-learning courses and university-community partnerships. This study not only introduced the voices of community partners into ongoing debates about the import and impact of service-learning on communitybased organizations, but also illustrated how service-learning relationships can develop differently, depending on the initial and shared understanding of the service-learning goals. Theoretical, methodological, and practical implications for researchers, university administrators, community organizations, and college students are discussed.

Before beginning a service learning project, students and researchers must listen to the communities with whom they intend to work. By engaging in practical community listening activities, researchers can better understand local contexts and effectively solicit a community’s development needs. Photovoice is a very simple method that can be applied in service learning projects to help researchers understand the realities associated with their partner community. For service learning projects in unfamiliar settings, researchers should work closely with an experienced partner organization that understands a given community’s customs and culture. Applying Photovoice to development projects will facilitate problem identification, promote community empowerment, and assist in developing mutually-beneficial community partnerships. Photovoice creates a platform within a community for candid discussion about relevant issues, challenges, and needs for community-based development. In addition to improving the sustainability of service learning community partnerships, these activities enhance the resiliency of the projects that develop through community empowerment. This article outlines the significance of community listening in service learning projects, and it provides a case study of the Photovoice method that student researchers used when engaging with a rural Nicaraguan community.

This study explores how peer advising affects student project teams' discussions of engineering ethics. Peer ethics advisors from non-engineering disciplines are expected to provide diverse perspectives and to help engineering student teams engage and sustain ethics discussions. To investigate how peer advising helps engineering student teams' ethics discussions, three student teams in different peer advising conditions were closely observed: without any advisor, with a single volunteer advisor, and with an advising team working on the ethics advising project. Micro-scale discourse analysis based on cognitive ethnography was conducted to find each team's cultural model of understanding of engineering ethics. Cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) analysis was also conducted to see what influenced each team's cultural model. In cultural model, the engineering team with an ethics advising team showed broader understanding in social implications of engineering. The results of CHAT analysis indicated that differences in rules, community, and division of labor among three teams influenced the teams' cultural models. The CHAT analysis also indicated that the peer advisors working on the ethics advising project and the engineering team working on engineering design project created a collaborative environment. The findings indicated that collaborative environment supported peer ethics advising to facilitate team discussions of engineering ethics.

Attending to Difference in Indigenous People's Experiences of Cyberbullying: Toward a Research Agenda

The role of service-learning in heritage preservation and engineering education

Community-partnered engineering projects provide a mechanism for cultivating the development of sociotechnical engineers prepared to design within diverse and complex cultural, environmental, social, and other contexts. During the 2021–2022 academic year, we guided three teams of senior undergraduate engineering students through year-long community-partnered projects for their required capstone design course, which instead typically features corporate/industry-sponsored projects. We analyzed end-of-semester reflections (both fall and spring semester) from each student using inductive thematic analysis to explore how they perceived their experiences. The themes that emerged from the student reflections, including connectivity, transdisciplinary, multiple stakeholders, sustainability, justice, and ethics, are all components of the sociotechnical engineering capabilities that we are working to develop in our students. We consider these findings encouraging, and suggestive that integrating community-partnered projects into engineering capstone design offerings is worthwhile and effective. However, our implementation was not without challenges, such as trying to force the projects to fit into a course structure and timeline developed to support corporate/industry-sponsored project teams, which was burdensome to the community-partnered project teams. In this paper, we highlight both the complexities and benefits of this approach and insights gained from student and instructor reflections.

This study aims at giving some thoughts that cultural differences influence a great deal in English communication.This research is limited to a brief theoretical background of the importance of mastering the English language and how cultural and communication barriers can be reduced.The data of this research were taken from English novels and their translations in Indonesian, and from students in real situation at hospitality institution, Bandung Tourism Higher Education.In this research some thoughts of English and Indonesian linguists are compared.In Indonesia Misunderstandings frequently take place in any situations especially in understanding written English, for examples: The problems for Indonesian students lie on understanding the meaning of English Progressive in the first place, and interpreting Indonesian Progressive sentences into English.Other English constructions such as Simple Present, Simple Past, Present or Past Perfect Simple have no problem in translating into Indonesian.Cultural differences also make barriers in communication.That is why it is important to solve the problem to avoid misunderstanding.The author's contributions to this problem are as follows: explaining the importance of mastering English, teaching culture differences between English and Indonesian, and investigating English progressive correspondences in Indonesian to limit misunderstanding

Cultural differences between researchers and potential participants in clinical trials could result in communication barriers, which are likely to hinder awareness and pose challenges to the informed consent process. An intercultural communication approach to the informed consent process could facilitate potential participants’ understanding; strategies such as the involvement of family members, cultural insiders, cultural mediators during the consent process should be adopted to overcome language and cultural barriers. The article highlights as well barriers related to the interaction between gender and multicultural issues in cross-cultural communication and stresses some culturally-sensitive strategies for the inclusion of pregnant women in clinical research. Consent procedures tailored to local cultural patterns with a focus on the use of new technologies are discussed.

Culture shock, adaptation, and organizational performance in sport: A psychological perspective

A Community Partner’s Role During a First-Year Service Learning ProjectThere are three primary roles in a Service Learning project: student, teacher, and communitypartner. It has been established that students enjoy and benefit from Service Learningexperiences. Teachers benefit as well, in their ability to meet educational objectives. For thecommunity partner, the advantage appears to be obvious; their problem is resolved. However,this cannot be assumed. This paper will explore actual gains and losses incurred by onecommunity partner during an experience with a Service Learning project.In the 2011 – 2012 academic year, 45 first-year engineering students were introduced to a needfrom a remote village in Kenya. Though it would have been preferable to work directly with thevillagers, poor internet quality and the extreme distance made this impossible. As a result, peoplefrom the local community, who regularly travelled to the village, identified the need and acted asthe ‘customer’ during the 18-week long project. In groups of 3, the students designed charcoalpresses to convert agricultural waste into charcoal briquettes more efficiently than the currentprocess.The community partners were involved in the design process during the problem introduction, ahands-on demonstration of the process, Q&A sessions, design reviews, and the designexposition. Also, while in the village, the community partners facilitated an exchange ofinformation and performed an experiment designed by the students. The time demand, thoughgreat, gave the students a better understanding of the needs of the villager.This paper will include a qualitative assessment of the community partners’ involvements. Thiswill be achieved through interviews, an examination of activities between the students and thecommunity partner, and excerpts from the data acquired in the remote village. Finally, theaccomplishments and deficiencies that the community partner experienced will be analyzed, andrecommendations will be made to ensure that the expectations are achievable.

Reviewed by: The Unheard Voices: Community Organizations and Service Learning ed. by Randy Stoecker, Elizabeth A. Tryon, Amy Hilgendorf David Dadurka The Unheard Voices: Community Organizations and Service Learning Randy Stoecker, Elizabeth A. Tryon, with Amy Hilgendorf Philadelphia: Temple UP, 2009. 232pp. An extensive field report about community organizations in the greater Madison, WI, region, The Unheard Voices offers a rare look into how charities and nonprofit organizations perceive their service-learning relationships with academic institutions. From the perspective of community partners, the view isn’t always so pleasant. The Unheard Voices fills a frequently ignored gap in service-learning studies and offers long overdue insight from community partners. However, the book’s value is limited by its focus solely on the Madison region, an area known for its community activism and service-learning participation. Despite this limitation, the book is effective at raising awareness about the level of sustained engagement needed by both academics and community partners to create greater reciprocity in service-learning projects. The volume’s editors Randy Stoecker, Elizabeth A. Tryon, and Amy Hilgendorf, all based out of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, note that despite service learning’s goal of serving community partners, service-learning researchers have generally ignored the perspective of those organizations that academic institutions aim to serve (5). Stoecker, Tryon, and Hilgendorf start with the premise that there are problems inherent with doing service learning from the “perspective of the academy” (viii) and ask the question “Who is served by service learning?” (1). Using responses from sixty-seven interviews with staff of community organizations in the greater Madison region, the authors’ results suggest that higher education institutions appear to reap more of the rewards of service-learning partnerships than community organizations. The book itself emerges from a service-learning project, born of a graduate seminar on qualitative research in which both graduate and undergraduate students—with a wide range of backgrounds in nonprofit work—contributed to the majority of the book chapters. This model itself suggests what service-learning practitioners might [End Page 84] undertake in their communities to improve the effectiveness of service projects, and it represents one of the greatest strengths of the book. The first half of the book (chapters one through five) is devoted to understanding the problems with service-learning relationships, the motivations that drive community organizations to participate in service learning, how they engage in partnerships and manage service learners. The second half (chapters six through ten) develops responses to address the problems that drive community partners away from service-learning partnerships. In chapter one, Stoecker and Tryon highlight the growing concern over the “issue of whether service learning truly serves communities” (3). The authors argue that previous research has been based on “superficial” methods, using focus groups and Likert scale questionnaires to present a rosy picture of community organization and educational institution service-learning relationships (5). They argue that projects, because educational institutions are the main drivers of them, have veered too far to the learning side of service learning, ignoring the service aspects and what benefits the community reaps from such relationships. Stoecker draws on his twenty years of experience to highlight instances of disengaged faculty who sometimes don’t care about the results of unsuccessful community projects, fail to manage service learners, or lack understanding of the needs of their partner organizations or local communities. Chapter two provides an overview of what motivates community organizations to participate in service learning. Authors Shannon Bell and Rebecca Carlson assert four primary reasons community organizations work with service learners: to build capacity, to achieve long-term education goals, to form potentially advantageous relationships with the university community, and to help students better understand their work. While building capacity seems intuitive for community organizations, Bell and Carlson point out that they were “greatly surprised to learn that many community organizations hosted service learners not because it expanded organizational capacity, but because the organizational staff saw it as part of their mission to educate the public” (23). However, Bell and Carlson end the chapter with a quote from a community partner who notes that putting students to work with meaningful, education-focused tasks as opposed to busy work...

African students in India face unique challenges beyond typical cultural adaptation, including racism, dietary changes, and environmental differences. Existing research on international student stress overlooks their specific experiences. Indian media and academic reports highlight racial prejudice, emphasizing the need for psychological profiling. Limited institutional support, government policies, and mental health services further intensify feelings of isolation among African students. It is well-established that international students face several challenges when they arrive at a foreign institute to pursue higher education. (Biserova & Shagivaleeva, 2019). A mixed-methods research methodology was used to identify the major factors, such as cultural shock, academic stress, social isolation, housing challenges, unfavourable weather, financial difficulties, and language barriers, that affect African students’ psychological and emotional health during their studies at Lovely Professional University through qualitative and quantitative survey data obtained from open-ended and closed-ended questions. The author applied descriptive statistics with thematic analysis to study how relocation difficulties affect students’ mental health outcomes. The research analyzes the effects of relocation on the psychological health and general well-being of African international students studying at Lovely Professional University (LPU) in India. Through descriptive research, the paper explores the distinct challenges African students encounter, such as language barriers, culture shock, financial constraints, housing challenges, and discrimination and racism that have direct effects on their academic success and psychological state. Three main issues surfaced: cultural differences, financial difficulties, and language constraints. Discrimination and acculturative stress have a clear negative impact on students' mental health. According to the study's intricate pattern, institutional measures that include support networks are crucial for mitigating these difficulties. Therefore, more scientific research on these students’ problems is important for universities and policymakers to formulate interventions that promote their mental well-being. The conclusion offers recommendations for improving the well-being of African students.

This Work in Progress Research paper aims to contribute to theories relevant to trust, self-efficacy and team effectiveness in engineering student teams. Self-efficacy and trust in teammates are both crucial for team effectiveness. Borrego et al. in a review on team effectiveness within engineering education have highlighted the scarcity of research on psychological constructs, such as trust. This work was inspired by their call for more research that connects engineering education research with the industrial and organisational psychology literature to improve engineering education practice and the outcomes relating to team working. Team working depends on social and communication skills of individual teammates. However, collaborative teams can experience socio-communication challenges. These can be even more pronounced in neuro-atypical (NT) students. With an increasing number of students, hidden or diagnosed, who are neurologically atypical (NAT) within engineering courses investigating ways to support development of trust and self-efficacy has become even more important. Using two real-world case studies, the efficacy of the Computer Orchestrated Group Learning Environment (COGLE), a novel software intervention that supports the development of trust and self-efficacy of individuals in teams of neuro-typical and neuro-atypical students, is investigated using qualitative and quantitative methods. In particular to answer the two research questions: 1. How does the use of COGLE affect the self-efficacy of NT and NAT engineering students learning together? 2. How does the use of COGLE affect the development of trust between a team of NT and NAT engineering students learning together? The case studies show how COGLE can be used within two pedagogical approaches: Flipped Classroom and Project Based Learning, which are commonly used in engineering education. The learning gain data and related effect sizes from both cases show that COGLE was successful in enhancing self-efficacy in all students. Furthermore, both cases show three very interesting results relating to trust: firstly, the teammates developed trust in each other in just 4 two-hour sessions; secondly, the students, including the neuro-atypical students, were able to correct their trust due to varied interactions enabled by COGLE; and finally, as trust and self-efficacy was enhanced before students were asked to work together on a collaborative activity, it helped both neuro-typical and neuro-atypical students to be fully involved in team work, thereby improving the team's effectiveness. The implication for practice is that COGLE can be used to effectively prepare all students for as shown by learning gain and increased levels of trust and enhance team effectiveness.

This study aims to explore the multifaceted challenges faced by Afghan refugee entrepreneurs in Peshawar, Pakistan. The research focuses on identifying key social, economic, political, legal, and cultural barriers that affect their entrepreneurial efforts and overall integration into the local economy.Using a qualitative case study approach, the research gathers and analyzes data from relevant literature, field observations, and interviews with Afghan refugee entrepreneurs in Peshawar. This method allows for an in-depth understanding of their lived experiences and coping mechanisms within a complex socio-political context.Findings reveal that Afghan refugee entrepreneurs encounter several systemicchallenges. Legal ambiguity and restrictive regulations hinder their ability to formalize and sustain businesses. Access to financial resources is limited, and many faces discriminatory practices in credit access and market entry. Cultural and language differences further complicate their integration into local business networks. Additionally, geopolitical tensions amplify their vulnerability, affecting both their stability and economic prospects. Despite these obstacles, many entrepreneurs exhibit resilience by relying on informal support networks and adapting strategies to sustain their ventures.The study underscores the urgent need for targeted policy interventions that support Afghan refugee entrepreneurs. Addressing legal, financial, and cultural barriers is essential for fostering inclusive economic participation and promoting social cohesion in host communities. Facilitating their integration not only benefits the refugees but also contributes to the broader development of local economies.

Background and Purpose. This project had three purposes: 1) to document the experiences and reciprocal learning achieved by physical therapist students, nurse students, and high school seniors from culturally diverse backgrounds who participated in the peer-mentoring program; 2) to expand upon an existing model of mentor-mentee communication; 3) to generate case studies that are interdisciplinary, culturally competent, and informed by the life experiences of high school seniors from diverse minority groups. Case Description. Twelve students were placed into one of three interdisciplinary teams comprised of physical therapist upperclassmen, nurse graduate students, and high school seniors. Student teams worked collaboratively for 9 weeks to develop three case studies. The high school seniors shared real-life stories about their personal or family health concerns. The university-enrolled students transformed the high school seniors' stories into patient cases. All students were required to reflect upon and record in a journal their learning at two points during the project, Week 4 and Week 9. Reflective data was used to modify an existing mentor-mentee communication model and evaluate student experiences within the project. The cases will be used in an introductory course to train Northeastern University (NU) second-year physical therapist students. Outcomes. Three interdisciplinary case studies were developed, each portraying one of the following medical conditions: Sickle cell crisis, cerebral palsy with thoracic scoliosis, and hip fracture. Also, an existing peer-mentoring communication model was modified to include a description of the interdisciplinary, cross-cultural elements present within the student team interactions. Discussion. Upon reflection, the university-enrolled students indicated that participation in the project allowed them to practice the skills of: listening, facilitation and leadership, working as a team, cultural awareness, and appreciating the roles of different allied health providers and the need for diversity among providers. High school seniors gained awareness of allied health professional careers and validation of their career choice. In addition, they learned about medical terminology, expectations for college work, and the benefits of a college education. More research is indicated to devise educational models for developing cultural competence in allied health students and increasing minority representation in the allied health professions. Key Words: Physical therapist education, Peer mentoring, Reflection, Cultural competence. BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE One goal of professional physical therapist preparation is to educate students to display sensitivity to individual and cultural differences in all professional interactions.1(p11) Professional interaction requires good patient-provider communication. An impediment to a successful patientprovider encounter may occur when the respective parties are from different ethnic or cultural (crosscultural) backgrounds,2,3 although research supporting this claim is limited.4 Providers without experience or training to work in cross-cultural situations may not be properly equipped to understand diseases or conditions characteristic of a particular population. As a consequence, the provider may not communicate effectively with either patients or family members.5 Inadequate communication can potentially undermine treatment outcomes.6 Our nation is becoming increasingly more racially and ethnically diverse with approximately 30% of the current population composed of minority groups-African American, 12.2%; Hispanic/ Latino, 11.9%; Asian, 3.8%; and Native American/ Alaskan 0.7%.7 This trend is projected to continue. By the year 2020, the population of minorities will increase to 37.8%.8 Individuals of diverse cultural/ ethnic backgrounds are in need of health care and preventative health services. Minority populations, such as African Americans, Hispanics/Latinos, and Native Americans, are also disproportionately affected by chronic and preventable diseases, including cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, and obesity. …