Cultural Assimilator

The ability to adapt and thrive in an unfamiliar cultural context is incrementally becoming vital. Therefore, universities aim to create an environment to enhance students’ cultural intelligence (CQ). This study aimed to detect English as a foreign language (EFL) learners’ CQ in a state university in Turkey and discern their strengths and weaknesses in intercultural communication. The study employed the CQ scale to detect learners’ CQ, and open-ended questions to unearth strengths and weaknesses. SPSS was run for quantitative analysis, whereas MAXQDA was tapped for qualitative data analysis. The results indicated high values for students’ metacognitive, motivational, and behavioural CQ, albeit learners’ cognitive CQ was moderate. There was no significant difference between the CQ of male and female students. Moreover, the overseas experience did not have a significant influence on their CQ. However, there was a significant difference in the cognitive CQ of students at different proficiency levels. Qualitative analysis revealed learners’ strengths, such as communication and adaptation skills, and an interest in diverse cultures. However, learners’ scant knowledge of different cultures and low language proficiency were significant problems impeding learners’ intercultural communication. The implications of the study might provide insight for stakeholders to raise students’ CQ in educational spheres.

Mathematics education should become holistic, relevant, and connected with learners’ everyday lives, including their culture. This qualitative study aimed to explore the integration of the Ilokano culture in Teaching Mathematics at the University of Northern Philippines (UNP) in Vigan City, Ilocos Sur, through a case study qualitative research approach. Findings showed that there is an integration of Ilokano culture in teaching mathematics in UNP. Ilokano culture is primarily used to motivate students or introduce new concepts. The integration of Ilokano culture establishes connections between the faculty and their students and their cultural heritage. The faculty participants also used culture-related examples and problems to emphasize mathematical concepts. Various elements of Ilokano culture are embedded in the teaching-learning process, the language, practices, values, known figures, landmarks, and crafts included. A culture-responsive structure exists in UNP as evidenced by its vision, mission, and developmental goals, which stress preserving and promoting its rich cultural heritage. Difficulties in Ilokano culture integration include inadequacy in knowledge about culture and formal preparation in culture integration and culture-relevant resource materials. The integration of culture into the mathematics curriculum makes it more relevant to the students; thus, it is recommended that teachers design learning experiences in mathematics classes based on the students' cultural background.

It was only in 2004 that the European Union, originally composed of Western European countries, began to include the so-called Eastern European countries (Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Estonia, the Czech Republic, Poland, and Hungary), which had transitioned from socialism to democracy. This was followed by Romania and Bulgaria joining in 2007 and Croatia in 2013. The very nature of the European continent, with its diverse peoples, languages, histories, and cultures, has undoubtedly necessitated policies that recognize, acknowledge, and seek to reduce differences as much as possible, with the ultimate goal of uniting them. In particular, the EU member states, which were originally composed of Western European countries, may have been in dire need of policies to bridge the gap with the countries that underwent communism after World War II, as many of them joined the EU in the 2000s. The policy direction of cultural integration with former communist countries aligns with the general trend of European integration. However, it is being promoted in various ways, taking into consideration the special history and situation of these countries. The goal is to provide opportunities for people to understand each other's history and culture, fostering interactions that contribute to overcoming cultural differences and forming strong bonds. In particular, the former communist countries have an economic gap with existing EU member states due to past political and economic changes. The EU is working to provide economic infrastructure and industrial support to these countries, strengthen cooperation, and promote cultural integration with Western European countries. Such directions and policies continue to be promoted for cultural integration between existing EU member states and former communist countries. Examples of these initiatives include the European Capital of Culture project and the Erasmus Program, which aim to foster cultural understanding and integration among future generations through education, ultimately working towards the goal of European integration. In any case, it is clear that the country of 'Croatia' and the city of 'Rijeka,' which gained independence from the former Yugoslavia in 1991 and were not initially recognized by not only European citizens but also the world, seized the opportunity of the European Capital of Culture 2020 project to establish closer communication and cooperation with Europe and the global community. We expect that they will continue progressing on the path of 'integration' while preserving 'cultural diversity' in the future.

Objective: The objective of this study is to explore the role of cultural adaptation in interfaith marriages, focusing on how couples navigate religious differences, integrate cultural practices, and manage identity negotiation. Methods: This qualitative study employed semi-structured interviews with 20 participants who have been in interfaith marriages for at least three years. Participants were selected using purposive sampling to ensure diversity in cultural and religious backgrounds. Data were collected until theoretical saturation was achieved and were analyzed using NVivo software. Thematic analysis was conducted to identify key themes and subthemes related to communication strategies, religious practices, cultural integration, emotional support, and identity negotiation. Results: The analysis revealed five main themes: communication strategies, religious practices, cultural integration, emotional support, and identity negotiation. Couples employed various communication strategies such as open dialogue, conflict resolution, and non-verbal communication to bridge cultural gaps. Joint religious practices and celebrations, as well as respectful handling of dietary restrictions, were crucial in fostering mutual respect. Cultural integration was facilitated through adopting traditions, adapting attire, and engaging in social networks. Emotional support from spouses, families, and communities played a significant role in maintaining marital stability. Identity negotiation involved balancing individual and joint identities, dealing with societal perceptions, and educating others about their interfaith marriage. Conclusion: The study underscores the complex and nuanced strategies interfaith couples use to navigate cultural adaptation. Effective communication, mutual respect in religious practices, cultural integration, emotional support, and identity negotiation are critical for the success of interfaith marriages. The findings highlight the need for supportive legal frameworks and societal acceptance to facilitate the thriving of interfaith unions. This study contributes valuable insights into the broader processes of cultural adaptation and integration in a globalized world.

Ocular Disease, Knowledge and Technology Applications in Patients With Diabetes

Rural tourism is a highly comprehensive industry that drives rural revitalization and is also an important support for consolidating the results of poverty eradication in the future. Only through high-quality integration of rural tourism with unique local vernacular cultural resources can rural tourism enhance its charm and truly contribute to rural revitalization. However, new industries related to the integration of cultural tourism are relatively rare, so the demand of tourists for culturally added value in rural tourism has increased. This paper analyzes the dilemma of cultural tourism integration development in Zhejiang Province, introduces the power open integration mechanism framework, combines the current situation of cultural tourism integration in Zhejiang, summarizes the practices and experiences of rural tourism and cultural integration in typical countries such as France, the United States, and Japan, puts forward the path of the integration of cultural industry and tourism industry, and deeply explores the connotation and value of culture in rural tourism, the implementation path of high-quality development of rural tourism and cultural integration, and provides a valuable reference for designing a high-quality rural tourism development path with cultural heritage.

Previous cultural psychological studies suggest that East Asians tend to think more holistically than Westerners and that these cultural differences in cognition are accounted for, in part, by psychological processes associated with a predominant social orientation of the self as independent in the West and as interdependent in the East. In addition to examining these self-construal variables as predictors of holistic cognition, the current study also examined the role that a self-focused manifestation of social anxiety ( social phobia tendencies) common in the United States and the role that an other-focused manifestation of social anxiety ( taijin kyofusho, or TKS tendencies) common in Japan play in holistic cognition. Samples of 142 Japanese and 125 Americans completed an instrument that measures degree of skill in holistic cognition and then completed measures of self-construal, social phobia, and TKS. The current study found that, in unpackaging cultural differences in holistic cognition, social phobia tendencies, given their self-focused nature, were associated with decreased levels of holistic cognition while TKS tendencies, given their other-focused nature, were associated with increased levels of holistic cognition. Thus, holistic cognition served as an important basic cognitive feature which distinguishes between the two culturally divergent versions of social anxiety. Furthermore, independent self-construal was found to be more strongly associated with the self-focused component of social anxiety while interdependent self-construal was only associated with the other-focused component of social anxiety.

Creativity and innovation have become critical organizational capabilities in today’s global environment, and leveraging creative potential of employees across various cultural contexts has become increasingly important. Although recognized among researchers, cross-cultural differences in creativity are not yet well understood. We contribute to this line of research by constructing a theoretical model that focuses on cultural differences in cognition (i.e., holistic vs. analytic thinking) that affect the evaluation of creative ideas. The cultural cognition perspective allows us to theorize about the interrelationship between an idea’s novelty and its usefulness. We propose that to the extent there is a trade-off between an idea’s novelty and usefulness, cultural differences in cognition will systematically influence the trade-off relationship such that Easterners will perceive a stronger trade-off between novelty and usefulness as compared with their Western counterparts. Such effects of cultural cognition, however, can be reduced by contextual factors of multicultural exposure, cognitive team diversity, and organizational climate for innovation. Our cultural cognition perspective complements the extant cultural value and social norms perspectives on cross-cultural differences in creativity and innovation.

<p>With the rapid development of urbanization, modernization, information technology and globalization, cultural patterns are becoming more and more diverse and social groups are becoming more and more atomized. We need to re-examine cultural diversity and think about how education can promote cultural exchange and integration. Based on the concept of multicultural education, this paper analyzes the current situation of cultural diversity in Chinese society from the dimensions of urban and rural areas, nationalities, regions, social classes, gender and globalization. On this basis, it explains several core values of pluralistic and cultural education: achieving equity by teaching tolerance and recognition, reflecting on power relations and knowledge construction, pluralistic unity and cultural integration, and cosmopolitanism in the age of globalization. From the perspective of improving educational policies, it is proposed that cultural diversity should be recognized and recognized in educational policies and practices, and appropriate curriculum power and space should be given. Construct the flexible education policy that puts fairness first and quality equal; with the help of big data and information technology, we can construct accurate and personalized multicultural education.</p>

This research investigates the role of culture in Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) pedagogy and its implications for language teaching. The study employs a mixed-methods approach, integrating qualitative interviews with educators and focus groups with students to explore how cultural integration impacts learner motivation, engagement, and communicative competence. Educators and students from diverse cultural backgrounds participated in the study. Educators, selected for their experience in TEFL and cultural content integration, were interviewed to understand their perspectives on cultural integration strategies and perceived impacts on students. Meanwhile, student focus groups provided insights into their experiences with culturally integrated lessons and their development of intercultural competence. Qualitative data analysis involved thematic coding of interview transcripts and focus group discussions, while quantitative data from surveys assessed attitudes towards cultural integration and its frequency in teaching practices. Results indicate that while educators vary in their integration approaches—ranging from daily to infrequent—literature, music, and traditional customs are commonly integrated elements. Students overwhelmingly perceive cultural integration positively, noting increased motivation and a deeper understanding of language contexts. Findings highlight the critical role of cultural awareness in enhancing language learning outcomes, fostering intercultural competence, and preparing learners for global communication contexts. Recommendations include enhancing teacher training in cultural competence and expanding resources to support diverse cultural content in TEFL curricula.

As one of the most dynamic economic regions in China, the Guangdong -Hong Kong -Macao Greater Bay Area (Greater Bay Area) not only carries the responsibility of economic development, but also plays a pivotal role in cultural exchange and integration. This area brings together the profound heritage of traditional Chinese culture and the diverse foreign Western cultures, forming a unique cultural ecology. However, in the process of cultural integration, it also faces many challenges and opportunities. This paper aims to discuss the current situation, problems and countermeasures of cultural integration in the Greater Bay Area, with a view to providing new ideas for cultural integration in the region.

In the 21 st century, business engagements are becoming increasingly global, and global teams are now an established form of organising work in multinational organisations. As a result, managing cultural diversity within a global team has become an essential part of ensuring motivation, creativity, innovation and efficiency in today’s business world. Global teams are typically composed of a diversity of experiences, frames of references, competencies, information and, not least, cultural backgrounds. As such, they hold a unique potential for delivering high performance in terms of innovative and creative approaches to global management tasks; however, instead of focusing on the potentials of cultural diversity, practitioners and studies of global teams tend to approach cultural diversity as a barrier to team success. This study explores some of the barriers that cultural diversity poses but also discusses its potential to leverage high performance in a global context. Our study highlights the importance of how team leaders and team members perceive ‘culture’ as both a concept and a social practice. We take issue with a notion of culture as a relatively fixed and homogeneous set of values, norms and attitudes shared by people of national communities; it is such a notion of culture that tends to underlie understandings that highlight the irreconcilability of cultural differences. Applying a more dynamic and context-dependent approach to culture as a meaning system that people negotiate and use to interpret the world, this study explores how global leadership teams can best reap the benefits of cultural diversity in relation to specific challenging areas of intercultural team work, such as leadership style, decision making, relationship building, strategy process, and communication styles. Based on a close textual interpretation of31 semi-structured interviews with members of global leadership teams in eight Danish-owned global companies, our study identified different discourses and perceptions of culture and cultural diversity. For leaders of the global leadership teams (Danish/European) and other European team members, three understandings of cultural diversity in their global teams were prominent: 1) Cultural diversity was not an issue 2) Cultural diversity was acknowledged as mainly a liability. Diversities were expressed through a difference in national cultures and could typically be subsumed under a relatively fixed number of invariable and distinct characteristics. 3) Cultural diversity was an asset and expressions of culture had to be observed in the situation and could not simply be derived from prior understandings of cultural differences. A clear result of our study was that those leaders of global teams who drew on discourses of the Asian ‘Other’ adherred to the first two understandings of cultural diversity and preferred leadership styles that were either patriarchal or self-defined as ‘Scandinavian’. Whereas those leaders who drew on discourses of culture as dynamic and negotiated social practices adhered to the third understanding of cultural diversity and preferred a differentiated and analytical approach to leading their teams. We also focused on the perceptions of team members with a background in the country in which the global teams were co-located. These ‘local’ team members expressed a nuanced and multifaceted perspective on their own cultural background, the national culture of the company, and their own position within the team, which enabled them to easily navigate between essentialist perceptions of culture while maintaining a critical stance on the existing cultural hegemonies. They recognised the value of their local knowledge and language proficiency, but, for those local members in teams with a negative or essentialist view of cultural diversity, it was difficult to obtain recognition of their cultural styles and specific, non-local competences. Our study suggests that the way global team members perceive culture, based on dominant societal discourses of culture, significantly affects the understandings of roles and positions in global leadership teams. We found that discourses on culture were used to explain differences and similarities between team members, which profoundly affected the social practices and dynamics of the global team. We conclude that only global teams with team leaders who are highly aware of the multiple perspectives at play in different contexts within the team hold the capacity to be alert to cultural diversity and to demonstrate agility in leveraging differences and similarities into inclusive and dynamic team practices.

In the European and British context, the much referred to concept of ‘cultural diversity’ and its equivalent in French and German is often evoked as complementary to, a synonym for, or an advance on, the similarly omnipresent term ‘multiculturalism’. This is mainly due to shifts in the perception of ethnically-marked difference in the postwar period. Particularly in the British context, these shifts were characterized by moving from a policy approach based on support for ‘ethnic minority’ cultures to multiculturalism, and then most recently to cultural diversity (Bennett, 2001: 58–9) In many different contexts, where metropolitan (as well as national and European) cultural policy engages with the relationship between people of different cultural backgrounds in European cities, cultural diversity seems to suggest a progressive, anti-discrimination agenda. However, when examined in more detail within the linguistic and pragmatic context of policy documentation and political debate, ‘cultural diversity’ becomes ambiguous, difficult to pin down, as well as contradictory. Whereas ‘multiculturalism’ discourses explicitly thematize questions of cultural coexistence or integration, and have been met with highly politicized support, critique or rejection, cultural diversity discourses are more fluid in their implications, and more in need of contextualizing within their respective political and cultural environments. Drawing upon key policy documents and political discussion produced at the European, national and metropolitan levels, we will explore in detail some of the linguistic and pragmatic contexts of cultural diversity and the semantic fields within which the term acquires its significance. Our aim is to examine the extent to which the multiple meanings of cultural diversity across the different levels and layers of policy and public debate in European nations, disguise or even potentially hinder and misdirect the discussion about greater transnational coexistence, which the earlier debates about multiculturalism had begun. Our critique is not intended as a defence of multiculturalism insofar as this has come to mean ‘a carnival of nations within nations’, but rather as a critique and clarification of the shifting term of ‘cultural diversity’.

The Islamic Guidance and Counseling Study Program implements the MBKM curriculum by integrating inclusive and contextual cultural and da'wah values, where the MBKM policy demands adaptive and contextual curriculum innovation. The differences in cultural backgrounds between UIN Prof. K.H. Saifuddin Zuhri Purwokerto (Javanese culture) and UIN Sultan Aji Muhammad Idris Samarinda (Dayak and Malay culture) are an opportunity to develop a curriculum based on cultural integration and da'wah. This study aims to explore the adaptation of the MBKM curriculum of the Islamic Guidance and Counseling (BKI) study program based on cultural integration and da'wah. This study uses a qualitative approach with a phenomenological method. Data were collected through in-depth interviews, observations, and documentation studies of study program managers at both institutions. The results of the study indicate that the implementation of the MBKM curriculum based on cultural integration and da'wah in the BKI Study Program at UIN Saizu Purwokerto and UINSI Samarinda can broaden students' horizons in understanding the socio-cultural dynamics of society. This curriculum encourages students to be more sensitive to the local context in counseling and da'wah practices, and to develop an inclusive and contextual approach. Cultural integration in the curriculum not only improves students' cross-cultural competence but also strengthens local wisdom-based preaching strategies that are relevant to the spirit of MBKM.

Multi ethnicity and diverse cultures have shape Malaysia. Malaysians in recent years have adopted the new communication and media technologies to initiate virtual interaction and discussion in many topics cross cultural and ethnic backgrounds with the emerging ICT and internet infrastructure, the potential to promote cultural integration and peace are endless. The role of citizen journalism reflected this potential. They found to use the internet and new media platforms to create alternative space for news on the cyberspace to express multiple viewpoints in issues relating to cultural integration and unity which is something considered sensitive in multiracial society like Malaysians. The new media platform has made the Internet becoming more interactive thus create an alternative platform to discuss cross cultural and integration issues that often being shun away by the mainstream media. Today, thousands of citizen journalism blogs and citizen journalism has evolved in line with accessibility and growth of these technologies. This is reflected in the society by providing instant networking and expanding the space for people from different cultures existed in harmony and integration into the diverse society. The purpose of this paper is to analyse to what extent citizen journalism does contribute in promoting cultural integration among Malaysians. Based on analysing previous literatures, it is found that citizen journalism has influence cultural integration and peace yet the evidence is yet to be examine in Malaysian context. It is interesting to see if the contribution of citizen journalism in Malaysia potentially plays a more significant role in promoting cultural integration and peace among Malaysians.