Multi-ethnic Context Research Articles

Application of the Measure of Peer Justice Climate to a Multiethnic Sample

The measure created by H. Li offers a useful tool for investigating justice perceptions among team members or peer justice climate; however, more research is required to confirm its structure in lieu of competing models. This study provides evidence for the three-dimensional structure of peer justice climate within a multiethnic context and explores its relation to outcome variable performance. Participants were 304 undergraduate students from universities in the multiethnic, Republic of Trinidad and Tobago. Competing structures of peer justice climate were compared using exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses. Results indicated that peer justice climate is best conceptualized as having three dimensions (distributive, procedural, interactional) with an overarching justice factor connecting them. Suggestions are made for improving the measure. Procedural peer justice climate was found to have a significant positive relation with team performance.

Assessing Children’s Perceptions of Live Interactions With Avatars: Preparations for Use in ASD Therapy in a Multi-Ethnic Context

Avatars have been found to be useful tools to overcome communication barriers in people affected by Autistic Spectrum Disorders (ASD) and to help them understand and express emotions. However, it has been shown that the success of the interactions is highly dependent on the subject's identification with the avatar. In this study, we assess the variables that may influence that perception in children under 10, in the context of the largely multi-ethnic Ecuadorean society. The results reveal that, unlike previous studies showed for young adults, the ethnic traits displayed by the avatars are not a critical factor, as the the quality of the interactions was more influenced by the perception of the avatars' appearance, their similarity with the kids' peers and, above all, the ability of the human model who controls the avatar to use a pleasant voice, to succeed in making his/her questions and responses fully understood, and to master the non-verbal communication transmitted through gestures and voice.

Obrazovni izbori i stavovi prema multikulturalizmu i asimilacionizmu većine i manjine u četiri hrvatske višeetničke zajednice

In this study we examined the relationship between the preference of minority educational models and attitudes towards multiculturalism and assimilationism in four multiethnic communities in Croatia. A sample of 1568 students, aged 11 to 19, members of the Croatian majority and four national minorities (Czechs, Hungarians, Serbs and Italians) enrolled in model A of minority education (all classes are taught in the minority language), and 2000 of their parents participated in the research. Additionally, this is the first paper describing the major socio-demographic characteristics of students in minority education model A, as well as aspects of their language competence in Croatian and minority languages, the use of language in their families and their intentions to continue education in Croatia as opposed to their country of origin. The results have shown that the preferences of minority education models are slightly related to attitudes towards multiculturalism and assimilationism, but also that group status (minority or majority) and the multiethnic context the study has been conducted in are important determinants of attitudes towards multiculturalism and assimilationism.

Coming of age before the great expulsion: the story of the CILS-San Diego sample 25 years later

ABSTRACTCalifornia was transformed by immigration in the 1980s. In 1991, a representative sample of children of immigrants and refugees was drawn from 8th/9th graders in San Diego’s public schools. These CILS respondents were followed for nearly 25 years, from early adolescence to their late thirties, combining surveys with in-depth qualitative interviews. The educational and cultural integration of this segment of the new second generation has been largely positive. These adult children of immigrants – from Mexico, the Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, China, India and elsewhere – have above average educational attainments and mainly think of themselves as mainstream Americans, outcomes produced in an inclusive multiethnic context with a strong and accessible public higher education system. But in the current national context of accelerated deportations and exclusions, and a continuing retreat from investments in public education, the future for the next generation of immigrants’ children is far from certain.

Inclusion and exclusion in multi-ethnic physical education: an intersectional perspective

ABSTRACTCurrent educational policies on inclusion emphasise viewing ethnically diverse populations as a resource, yet scholars have pointed out that the Norwegian school system seems to value diversity to an only limited extent. This critique applies to physical education (PE) in Western countries. In this article, based on students’ stories from a multi-ethnic PE context, an intersectional perspective is used to investigate how processes of inclusion and exclusion are revealed. Data consist of semi-structured interviews with 17 students of diverse backgrounds and fieldnotes from observation in 56 PE lessons. Three questions are addressed: How are students’ cultural backgrounds acknowledged by teachers and students in a PE class? How are aspects of culture and ethnicity present in the activities being taught? How are aspects of race, ethnicity, and culture reflected in the communication in two multi-ethnic PE classes? The findings indicate that knowledge of students’ cultural backgrounds is not considered important for PE and that taught activities silently reflect a taken-for-granted majority culture. This paper makes some reflections on the implications of those findings.

Multilingual dementia care: defining the limits of translanguaging

In multi-ethnic contexts, it is not uncommon to find that dementia carers or their clients are using, as the medium for communication in care, a language in which they are not comfortable and/or are not fluent. In extreme cases, there could be no shared linguistic code at all. This article asks how feasible it is to provide adequate care with inadequate mutual language knowledge. In particular, it challenges the claims of some care-providers that nonverbal communication is a legitimate substitute for linguistic interaction. With reference to two recent models of aspects of communication, the article offers new insights into the necessary parameters for effective interaction. The conclusions have important implications for future decisions in dementia care. Meanwhile, the account extends the boundaries of language awareness by demonstrating the social importance of developing insights into linguistic practices in challenging contexts.

The impact of psychological capital on vocational well-being: The mediation effect of emotional labor and its invariance across ethnicities

This study investigated the underlying relationships among teachers’ psychological capital, emotional labor and vocational well-being in the multicultural and multiethnic context of China. Data was collected from 729 secondary school teachers working in the Xinjiang Province. The results indicated that psychological capital, as an important positive psychological resource, could positively affect emotional labor and vocational well-being. The effect of psychological capital on vocational well-being was partially mediated by emotional labor, and the mediation effect was invariance across ethnicities (minority vs Han). The results also showed that there are similarities and differences in magnitudes and interrelationships of the three core variables between Han and minority teachers, which could be explained by an interweaving of the specificity of minority culture and commonality of Chinese collectivistic culture. The study presented theoretical and practical implications for the development of teachers’ positive resources and capabilities in a multicultural educational context.

The Future of Genomic Studies Must Be Globally Representative: Perspectives from PAGE.

The past decade has seen a technological revolution in human genetics that has empowered population-level investigations into genetic associations with phenotypes. Although these discoveries rely on genetic variation across individuals, association studies have overwhelmingly been performed in populations of European descent. In this review, we describe limitations faced by single-population studies and provide an overview of strategies to improve global representation in existing data sets and future human genomics research via diversity-focused, multiethnic studies. We highlight the successes of individual studies and meta-analysis consortia that have provided unique knowledge. Additionally, we outline the approach taken by the Population Architecture Using Genomics and Epidemiology (PAGE) study to develop best practices for performing genetic epidemiology in multiethnic contexts. Finally, we discuss how limiting investigations to single populations impairs findings in the clinical domain for both rare-variant identification and genetic risk prediction.

Impact of personal cultural orientations and cultural intelligence on subjective success in self-employment in multi-ethnic societies

The purpose of this paper is to assess the impact of personal cultural orientation and behavioral aspect of cultural intelligence on subjective success in self-employment in a multi-ethnic context. Based on Sharma (J Acad Mark Sci 38: 787–806, 2010) taxonomy of personal cultural orientations, the paper examines the impact of interdependence and social inequality orientations on subjective success in self-employment (measured in terms of job satisfaction). Self-employed individuals working in multiethnic communities in East Africa (Uganda and Kenya) were compared with their counterparts in Germany operating in a less culturally or ethnically diverse context. Moderated mediation analysis using PROCESS macro model 8 is applied to measure the direct and indirect effects. Interdependence and social inequality cultural orientations were positively related to subjective success in self-employment for the East African sample, but not for the Germany sample. The results revealed that the impact of these cultural orientations on subjective success is mediated by behavioral cultural intelligence. However, these indirect effects vary between Germany and East Africa. Similar to cross-cultural settings, multiethnic business settings involve doing business with people from various ethnic and linguistic backgrounds. This requires the entrepreneur to behave in a manner that demonstrates appreciation and respect of other people’s cultures.

What’s cooking in multicultural films? Food, language and identity in British and American audiovisual products and their Italian dubbed version

In a world in which multiculturalism and multilingualism pervade every layer of society, much attention has been recently focused on exploring the symbolic relevance of socio-cultural traditions in multiethnic contexts of interaction. In particular, contemporary British and American films often investigate the importance of ethnic food as a key entry to cultural and linguistic memory in immigrant communities in Europe and the USA. Starting from these observations, this paper sets out to investigate the socio-cultural and linguistic functions food naming serves as an identity/ethnicity tool in both the original and the Italian dubbed version of such intercultural films as Bend it Like Beckham, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Ae Fond Kiss, The Mistress of Spices, My Life In Ruins, Eat Pray Love, The Hundred-Foot Journey, My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2, where the immigrant characters express their hybrid identity through the recurrent use of intra-sentential code-switching (Myers-Scotton 1993) from they-code to we-code (Gumperz 1982) when quoting the original names of their traditional dishes, thus symbolically and linguistically representing the transcultural and translanguaging space (Wei 2011) they live in.

Neo-Calvinism and Ethnic Churches in Multiethnic Contexts

Abstract Despite neo-Calvinism’s thorny historic relationship with apartheid, this article retrieves from neo-Calvinism to contribute to the contemporary evangelical conversation about ethnic and multiethnic churches. Scholars of various disciplines have commonly accepted a link between neo-Calvinism and South Africa’s apartheid. Meanwhile, neo-Calvinists labor to sever this link, wishing to disentangle their tradition from apartheid’s evils, such as the enforcement of racially segregated churches. In reaction to the evils of such segregation, many contemporary Evangelicals have advocated for multiethnic churches that demographically reflect their ethnically diverse communities on the basis of Christian unity. This has implicitly and explicitly challenged the legitimacy of ethnic churches. This article contends that despite the link between neo-Calvinism and apartheid, and despite neo-Calvinist efforts to sever this link, neo-Calvinism offers good biblical and theological support for the establishment of ethnic churches in multiethnic contexts without at all denigrating multiethnic churches or falling into the evils of apartheid.

Transcending homophily: Navigating institutional change in ethnically fragmented societies

Many enterprises operate within settings that are characterized by cultural and multi-ethnic diversity, and ethnic groups are often central to the organization of commercial exchange and trustworthy behaviors. However, we know surprisingly little about how enterprises in ethnically fragmented societies are affected by and respond to institutional change. We studied five enterprises in Kenya’s multi-ethnic context during devolution, and identified two types of strategic response: leveraging homophily and reframing homophily. Previous research has posited that with increasing institutional uncertainty, the influence of culturally similar peers tends to become increasingly important. In contrast, enterprises in our study reframed homophily away from ethnic to other shared identities. We extend research on homophily, showing how and why entrepreneurs re-define homophily under conditions of institutional change in ethnically fragmented societies.

A Mediterranean Diet Model in Australia: Strategies for Translating the Traditional Mediterranean Diet into a Multicultural Setting.

Substantial evidence supports the effect of the Mediterranean Diet (MD) for managing chronic diseases, although trials have been primarily conducted in Mediterranean populations. The efficacy and feasibility of the Mediterranean dietary pattern for the management of chronic diseases has not been extensively evaluated in non-Mediterranean settings. This paper aims to describe the development of a MD model that complies with principles of the traditional MD applied in a multiethnic context. Optimal macronutrient and food-based composition was defined, and a two-week menu was devised incorporating traditional ingredients with evidence based on improvements in chronic disease management. Strategies were developed for the implementation of the diet model in a multiethnic population. Consistent with the principles of a traditional MD, the MD model was plant-based and high in dietary fat, predominantly monounsaturated fatty acids from extra virgin olive oil. Fruits, vegetables and wholegrains were a mainstay, and moderate amounts of nuts and seeds, fish, dairy and red wine were recommended. The diet encompassed key features of the MD including cuisine, biodiversity and sustainability. The MD model preserved traditional dietary components likely to elicit health benefits for individuals with chronic diseases, even with the adaptation to an Australian multiethnic population.

Autonomy Promotion in a Multiethnic Context: Reflections on some normative issues

The concept of health promotion enshrined in the Ottawa Charter grants an important place to autonomy. However, it is not clear that health broadly defined and autonomy are related in the sense intended by the authors of the Charter. Moreover, promotion of autonomy towards groups who do not consider it as a core value remains a problem. This paper presents a concept of autonomy and promotion that provide a partial answer to this problem. Examples of public policy in a multiethnic context are given to illustrate how the proposed conception of autonomy promotion differs from more coercive policies.

CLIL: Content based Instructional Approach to Second Language Pedagogy

The present paper accentuates the need for innovation in pedagogical theory and practice of the day. It elucidates the linguistic dilemma of the present times and identifies space for bilingualism and pluriculturalism. To make the readers acquainted with Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL), the authors corroborate the detailed theoretical framework by establishing links with growing trends of cross continent migration, rising globalisation and expansion of multicultural and multiethnic contexts in the educational arena. A brief prehistory of CLIL has also been explored to justify its birth in helping out the linguists and educationists in Europe and beyond. The paper delineates the theory of Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) diagrammatically employing content, cognition and communication in a linguistic culture. It explicates the various nomenclatures, dimensions, functions and the developmental stages of CLIL pedagogy at the dawn of the new millennium. After exploring the theoretical, functional and futuristic facets of CLIL, it is concluded that CLIL is an apt, economical and timely framework of bringing diverse cultures and languages closer to one another and can help build cosmopolitan identity of learners in the Knowledge Age.

The Validity of Theoretical Model of Rhetorical Sensitivity Based on Communication Mentality Structure in Multiethnic Context: Study for Certified Teachers in District of Simalungun, North Sumatera

The Validity of Theoretical Model of Rhetorical Sensitivity Based on Communication Mentality Structure in Multiethnic Context: Study for Certified Teachers in District of Simalungun, North Sumatera

CLIL Content Based Instructional Approach to Second Language Pedagogy

The present paper accentuates the need for innovation in pedagogical theory and practice of the day. It elucidates the linguistic dilemma of the present times and identifies space for bilingualism and pluriculturalism. To make the readers acquainted with Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL), the authors corroborate the detailed theoretical framework by establishing links with growing trends of cross continent migration, rising globalisation and expansion of multicultural and multiethnic contexts in the educational arena. A brief prehistory of CLIL has also been explored to justify its birth in helping out the linguists and educationists in Europe and beyond. The paper delineates the theory of Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) diagrammatically employing content, cognition and communication in a linguistic culture. It explicates the various nomenclatures, dimensions, functions and the developmental stages of CLIL pedagogy at the dawn of the new millennium. After exploring the theoretical, functional and futuristic facets of CLIL, it is concluded that CLIL is an apt, economical and timely framework of bringing diverse cultures and languages closer to one another and can help build cosmopolitan identity of learners in the Knowledge Age.

Interrupting the church’s flow: hearing ‘other’ voices on an outer urban estate

ABSTRACTHow might the Church of England – so focused currently on the language of ‘mission’, ‘action’ and numerical ‘growth’, and yet still largely entangled in race, class and ecclesiastical privilege – be carefully attentive to those voices that have been pushed to the edges of wider public discourse? What are the obstacles to such attentiveness? What theological resources are currently available? And how might we both imagine and practice an openness to interruption, so that our ‘missional flow’ – of words, of actions, of love, even – might not be all one-way? Beginning with one multiethnic outer estate context, this article surveys wider societal discourses of division along ethnic and class lines, and three broad responses within contemporary political theology to such divisions. Responding to two recent examples of an ecclesiocentric one-way flow, from a position of multiple privilege, the beginnings of an alternative approach, radically receptive to the church’s ‘others’, is outlined.

The interplay of Qadimism and Jadidism in twentiethcentury Dagestan: a longitudinal view on the teaching of Arabic language and Islam

The paper analyzes the interplay of Jadidism and “Qadimism” in the North Caucasus region of Dagestan, focusing on the question of educational methods – the usul-i jadid (“new method”) – since the early 20th century. While in the Tatar lands of Russia, Jadidism began as a new way in the teaching of one’s native Tatar language, in the multi-ethnic context of Dagestan the issue of pedagogy was important also for the transmission of Arabic. The authors argue that all through the Soviet era, “Qadimism” (as the traditional teaching system) continued to exist in Dagestan alongside jadidi approaches; and this coexistence led to a mixed method of teaching of Arabic and Islamic disciplines in the new Islamic schools that mushroomed in the early 1990s. This paper thus has several innovative aspects: 1) it provides a comparative approach to the study of Jadidism, emphasizing the particularities that set Daghestani Jadidism apart from the well-studied Tatar Jadid movement in the Volga-Urals; 2) it studies Jadidism in constant interaction with its competitor “Qadimism”, not as its antipode; and 3) it uses a longitudinal approach that covers the whole of the 20th century. Finally, this paper explores new ways by analyzing the personal educational experience of one of its co-authors, who went through the mixed “Qadim”/Jadid/Soviet system in the 1980s and early 1990s. These case studies challenge the widespread assumption that Jadidism was overall an undoubted success story, and that “Qadimism” was bound to disappear after the establishment of Soviet power and even more so after its dissolution.

Finding Tools to Limit Sectarian Violence in Indonesia: The Relevance of Restorative Justice

AbstractThis article explores the relevance of the restorative justice paradigm to issues of conflict avoidance and resolution in Indonesia. Sectarian violence engulfed Indonesia in the late 1990s after the fall of the New Order, largely as a result of resource competition and other economic factors. In addition, the revival of customary forms of authority through the national indigenous peoples movement exacerbated the potential for conflict between long‐settled indigenes and more recent migrants. A case study shows how the spread of communal conflict to the Lindu plain in Central Sulawesi was averted despite the sectarian violence in a nearby city. Local customary procedures of adjudication were insufficient to cope with such issues in a multiethnic context, as the ethnic groups in the area did not all subscribe to the same body of custom (adat). Instead, a diverse assembly of stakeholders invoked nationalist idioms of harmony and consensus to forge an agreement to avoid violence. Previous legal theorists have pointed to adat as a preexisting respository of restorative justice practices. However, this article argues that interethnic contexts require restorative practice to forge novel syntheses to deal with communal violence. Such syntheses may incorporate adat mechanisms, but they must also integrate other tools that gain the allegiance of multiple groups to work toward reconciliation and avoidance of further violence.