Multicultural Studies Research Articles

Dissensus, Irony, Dialectic

Dissensus, Irony, Dialectic

Internalisasi Multikulturalisme dalam Berbangsa pada Lembaga Pendidikan Pondok Pesantren (Studi pada Pondok Pesantren se-Kota Metro)

Conflicts related to multicultural are widely reported in mass media and electronics in various forms such as demonstrations and other blasphemies related to differences in Indonesia. This shows that many people still do not understand multiculturalism. If it is realized that it does not need to happen because the diversity that exists should be understood because in essentially multicultural have a purpose to understand each other and compete in goodness with ” taqwa” to Allah SWT.
 In multicultural studies multiculturalism is seen as Politic of Recognition; building awareness of cultural diversity, traditions or preserved habits. Recognition and acceptance of the condition is a politic of recognition that must be upheld. This includes; 1) Multicultural in Etnic and Cultural Groups. 2) Society in Metaphors of Mixed Culture. 3) Multiculturalism in Social Characteristics. 4) Hyperculturalism as a new view.
 From the study conducted in “pesantren cottage” in Metro city, multicultural multiculturalization has been done although has not been integrated into the curriculum of boarding school education officially.

Rereading Diaspora: Reverberating Voices and Diasporic Listening in Italo-Australian Digital Storytelling

AbstractThe contemporary diasporic experience is fragmented and contradictory, and the notion of ‘home’ increasingly blurry. In response to these moving circumstances, many diaspora and multiculturalism studies’ scholars have turned to the everyday, focussing on the local particularities of the diasporic experience. Using the Italo-Australian digital storytelling collectionRacconti: La Voce del Popolo, this paper argues that, while crucial, the everyday experience of diaspora always needs to be read in relation to broader, dislocated contexts. Indeed, to draw on Grant Farred (2009), the experience of diaspora must be read both in relation to—but always ‘out of’—context. Reading diaspora in this way helps reveal aspects of diasporic life that have the potential to productively disrupt dominant assimilationist discourses of multiculturalism that continue to dominate. This kind of re-reading is pertinent in colonial nations like Australia, whose multiculturalism rhetoric continues to echo normative whiteness.

Combating Racial Inequity Through Local Historical Analysis: A Community-Informed Social Studies Unit

One way for teachers to use engaging and relevant social studies curriculum is by delving into local history to help students understand the influence that community activists have had on national policies and events. In this article, we provide teachers an approach to incorporate topics of racial inequity in their classrooms by showcasing a dynamic social studies unit that reveals the role of local history and community activists during the national Civil Rights Movement. As an example within the unit, we present a local, historical narrative that describes the activism of three local Black teachers in Palm Beach County, Florida, whose efforts in the 1940s significantly impacted the foundations of what was to become the Civil Rights Movement. We then present a multicultural social studies unit developed from this local history and guidelines for teachers to enact their own locally informed social studies unit. This content will help teachers expose students to the rich history of their community’s past by sharing ways that teachers can incorporate culturally relevant instruction of racially charged topics into the classroom.

Just like us, but Jewish: Jewishness, ethnicity, class affinity and transnationality in Lima

Small Jewish, Latin-American communities have been commonly overlooked by the fields of Latin-American Studies and Jewish Studies. They, however, provide valuable sources for the study of ethnicity, religion, multiculturalism, national and transnational experience in Latin America. The article examines Jewish life in Lima (Peru) from the second half of the twentieth century to the first decade of the twenty-first century. It presents the case of a small, Latin-American, Jewish organized community and sheds light on the forms in which the reconfiguration of social classes in Peru, changes within the Catholic Church, the creation of a Jewish nation-state in Israel and the change in status of American Jewry have shaped this minority. While trying to establish how Jewishness and Peruvian-ness are negotiated in this context, the article addresses the process of social insertion of Limeño Jews, an otherwise diasporic, ethnic and religious group, into the upper-middle class as one of the main features of the ‘Jewish version of Lima’.

Interview Protocol Refinement: Fine-Tuning Qualitative Research Interview Questions for Multi-Racial Populations in Malaysia

A reliable interview protocol is the key to obtain good quality interview data. However, developing a valid interview protocol is not a simple task, especially for beginner-level researchers. Extensive understanding of the research topic is no guarantee to quality interview findings because many other factors may affect the interview process. In our study among injured workers in Malaysia, researchers face additional challenge of interviewing multi-ethnic and multi-cultural study population. Most of them are also from lower socioeconomic status and education level. The objective of this study is to refine the pre-constructed interview protocol to address these challenges for valid data collection. The protocol must be easily understood and cover all research objectives to gain insights of the worker’s return to work experience. This article demonstrated the use of the 4-step Interview Protocol Refinement (IPR) Framework on the interview questionnaire. The steps were (1) ensuring alignment between interview questions and research questions, (2) constructing an inquiry-based conversation, (3) receiving feedback on interview protocols and (4) pilot testing of the interview questions. The IPR framework is an effective tool for improving the interview protocol reliability and validity. The refinement processes corrected some shortcoming in the pre-refined questionnaires and the pilot testing ensured that the refined questions were understood by the respondent and able to obtain the intended answers based on the research objectives. Research quality can be further enhanced by applying additional strategies during the stages of research tools validation and data analysis.

Going on a Field Trip: Critical Geographical Walking Tours and Tactical Media as Urban Praxis in Sydney, Australia

Going on a Field Trip: Critical Geographical Walking Tours and Tactical Media as Urban Praxis in Sydney, Australia

Trends in multicultural studies published in Korea: An analysis of the studies focusing on bilingualism and/or bilingual education

Trends in multicultural studies published in Korea: An analysis of the studies focusing on bilingualism and/or bilingual education

The Interplay of Aesthetics, Usability and Credibility in Mobile Website Design and the Effect of Gender

In human-computer interaction, aesthetics, usability and credibility are key factors in the design of a successful website. Specifically, aesthetics has been identified as one of the main drivers of web credibility. However, in the mobile domain, large-scale research, cutting across cultures and continents, which is key to the generalizability of findings, is scarce. To bridge this gap, we conducted a multicultural study among 526 participants from 5 continents: Africa, Asia, North America, South America and Europe. Using four systematically designed mobile websites, we investigated: (1) the interrelationships among aesthetics, usability and credibility; and (2) the moderating effect of gender. Our results, based on partial least square path modeling, reveal that: (1) perceived aesthetics is stronger than perceived usability in predicting the perceived credibility of mobile websites; and (2) gender moderates the effect of perceived aesthetics on perceived usability, with this effect being stronger for males than for females. Our findings underscore the need for designers to pay closer attention to aesthetics in designing successful mobile websites, as their visual appeal, irrespective of gender, enhances their perceived ease of use and credibility. These findings are noteworthy because, given the usability challenges posed by the relatively small-screen size of the mobile device, designers may be tempted to focus on designing easy-to-use websites only, while downplaying their visual appeal. Such a decision may adversely impact the overall credibility of their websites going by users’ first impression.

Pre-Pilot and Pilot Studies with Malaysian Nurses on Transnational Nurse Education

This article reports on research undertaken to identify Malaysian nurses’ experiences of the part-time Transnational Higher Education post-registration top-up degree programmes delivered by one Australian and two UK universities. An interpretive paradigm and hermeneutic phenomenology and ethnographic principle of cultural interpretation research designs were used. A mixed methods approach was chosen, using both quantitative and qualitative methods. The Bristol Online Survey Questionnaire (BOS) and semi-structured interviews were initially selected to collect data. Pre-pilot testing refined the quantitative and qualitative data collection tools. However, the pilot study for BOS failed to elicit useful responses. This led to only the qualitative methodology being used to elicit participants’ views in a culturally sensitive way. The interview guide allowed nurses’ views of their experiences in relation to the research question to be obtained. This study adds to the knowledge and insight on pre-pilot and pilot studies in international multicultural studies in Asia.

왜 다문화교육이 한국의 신학생들에게 필요한가?

Shown by an increasing number of immigrants and the remarkable phenomena of multiculturalism in Korea, integrating multicultural education into the current education system is challenging for the Korean society. In this situation, it seems to the author that theological education in Korea needs to begin to incorporate the study of multiculturalism in a rapidly changing pastoral field and a transforming mission situation. For this, Quantitative Research was conducted to figure out the current understanding of theological students (38 of Presbyterian Seminary and 50 of Hanshin University) by questionnaires, before and after a three-day program on “Multicultural Ministry” and a one-hour lecture, “Multicultural Mission”, and there are some effective results from sorting and analyzing the data of SPSS. This leads to the conclusion that multicultural education is a must for theological students in Korea, and that education programs should be implemented as soon as possible.

Quality of life in women of reproductive age: a comparative study of infertile and fertile women in a Nigerian tertiary centre

The study examined the quality of life in women of reproductive age and the aim was to evaluate and compare the quality of life (QoL) scores among fertile and infertile women. A cross-sectional study was carried out among women attending the Gynaecology and Postnatal Clinics of Ekiti State University Teaching Hospital comparing their QoL using the World Health Organisation Quality of Life-BREF (WHOQOL-BREF) questionnaire. The age of fertile women was significantly higher than the age of infertile women (p < .05), while a significantly higher proportion of the infertile and fertile women and their spouses were civil servants (p < .05). Infertile women obtained significantly higher scores than fertile women in the physical domain (QoL) and significantly lower scores than fertile women in the social domain (QoL), (p < .05). Among the infertile women, those with secondary infertility had significantly better overall QoL scores, (p < .05). Logistic regression showed that infertility and unemployment in women were associated with significantly lower QoL scores in psychological and social domains (p < .05). The quality of life is significantly lower among infertile women compared to fertile ones and this should be borne in mind when attending to these women. Impact statement What is already known on this subject: Infertility has been shown to be associated with poor quality of life. Most of these studies were conducted in developed countries. What the results of this study add: The findings of this study revealed that women who were infertile had low quality of life scores compared to the fertile ones in physical, social and psychological domains. What the implications are of these findings for clinical practice and/or further research: A community-based and multicultural study involving more participants may shed more light on this topic in future research. Counselling sessions should be incorporated as part of the holistic approach in the day-to-day management of the infertile women.

Unwanted effects: Is there a negative side of meditation? A multicentre survey.

ObjectivesDespite the long-term use and evidence-based efficacy of meditation and mindfulness-based interventions, there is still a lack of data about the possible unwanted effects (UEs) of these practices. The aim of this study was to evaluate the occurrence of UEs among meditation practitioners, considering moderating factors such as the type, frequency, and lifetime duration of the meditation practices.MethodsAn online survey was developed and disseminated through several websites, such as Spanish-, English- and Portuguese-language scientific research portals related to mindfulness and meditation. After excluding people who did not answer the survey correctly or completely and those who had less than two months of meditation experience, a total of 342 people participated in the study. However, only 87 reported information about UEs.ResultsThe majority of the practitioners were women from Spain who were married and had a University education level. Practices were more frequently informal, performed on a daily basis, and followed by focused attention (FA). Among the participants, 25.4% reported UEs, showing that severity varies considerably. The information requested indicated that most of the UEs were transitory and did not lead to discontinuing meditation practice or the need for medical assistance. They were more frequently reported in relation to individual practice, during focused attention meditation, and when practising for more than 20 minutes and alone. The practice of body awareness was associated with UEs to a lesser extent, whereas focused attention was associated more with UEs.ConclusionsThis is the first large-scale, multi-cultural study on the UEs of meditation. Despite its limitations, this study suggests that UEs are prevalent and transitory and should be further studied. We recommend the use of standardized questionnaires to assess the UEs of meditation practices.

A Multi-Cultural Study of Salespeople's Behavior In Individual Pay-For-Performance Compensation Systems: When Managers Are More Equal And Less Fair Than Others

In this research, we examine salespeople's behavior in individual pay-for-performance compensation systems and show how perceived management fairness seems to energize sales employees in some environments but not in others. We use a large multicountry database of individual-level remuneration for more than 2,500 salespeople across four B2B industry sectors to demonstrate cultural adaptations of the effect of perceived management fairness. The results indicate that top management should be concerned with employees' perceptions of fairness in addition to the more typical concerns of control and motivation widely acknowledged in the microeconomics-based sales-force compensation literature. In particular, we show that perceptions of management fairness are key to salespeople's proportion of total pay generated by pay-for-performance formulas.

Moves, poetic types, poetic schemes, and cultural themes in Iranian obituaries

ABSTRACTObituaries are used to announce peoples’ deaths and are framed based on culture-specific worldviews. Obituaries are usually written by family members, friends, or in some cases advertising companies. The purpose of this study is threefold: (a) to identify the moves in Iranian obituaries; (b) to explore the poetic schemes and types of the poems used in obituaries; and (c) scrutinize the thematic content expressed in Persian poems used in obituaries. The data were collected from electronic and traditional advertising companies and were analysed both quantitatively and qualitatively. The data comprised 166 obituaries which were randomly selected. The results revealed 10 moves in the obituaries, 3 poetic schemes, 4 poetic types, and 10 cultural/religious themes. The findings, on a larger scale, could emphasize how diverse a culture’s perceptions of life and death could be and how a language variety (e.g. poetry) might help frame such perceptions in obituaries. The findings could also guide the categories that multi-cultural studies of obituaries may take into account.

Book Review: Commonwealth and Covenant: Economics, Politics, and Theologies of Relationality

Commonwealth and Covenant: Economics, Politics, and Theologies of Relationality. By Marcia Pally. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans Publishing, 2016. viii + 419 pp. $50.00 (paper).Humanities and multicultural studies scholar Marcia Pally may have been tempted in latter days to congratulate herself on a disorder well diagnosed, for her 2016 Commonwealth and Covenant: Economics, Politics, and Theologies of Relationality names not only Wests swing from human into individual separability, but social and political balkanization that has all too evidently resulted. Pally seeks no pendulum swing in reverse direction, but rather a vision of human existence defined by separability and situatedness in full mutual constitution, an ontology-and theology-of that she names separability-flmid-situatedness, distinction-amid-relation (p. 7). Only by rethinking life on this fundamental, ontological level, which precedes and produces ethics and law, can unduly separated rediscover their distinctive identities in relation with one another, exchanging self-isolation and agonism for a process of mutual consideration-worthiness by which they may reclaim formation of a common good (p. 10).Differentiated as telos of human existence must also be its means, and this holds true for Pally's own method of conveying message: both portions of her work rally support of an immense chorus of voices that, by their own varying attestations of distinction-amid-relation, multiply evidence that such an is indeed ontology rather than opinion (p. 26). In an initial secular and historical survey in part 1, Pally discerns commitments to separability-amid-situatedness even within thinkers (from Adam Smith to Friedrich Schelling) claimed for one polarized side or other. Her central focus, however, is given to Jewish and Christian theologies of relationality surveyed in part 2, which, whether received as truth or as truthful metaphor (p. 24), firmly ground of by grounding it within divine distinctionamid-relation itself (p. 16).The resulting whole succeeds in inviting a paradigm shift by sheer power of demonstration, offering a range of careful and compelling historical, historical-theological, doctrinal, and scriptural attestations of relational texture that might simply be the way things are (pp. 19, 333). At same time, it is not perfectly clear just who might find this ontological and theological deep dive most persuasive. Pally takes much greater pains with internal logic of Christian theological traditions than would be needed to receive them as meaningful myth; yet same rich theological work functions at least in part to illuminate a broader of that does not rely on it (p. …

Academic Course-based Service-learning for “21st Century Citizenship”: A Case of Introduction to Multicultural Studies

Academic Course-based Service-learning for “21st Century Citizenship”: A Case of Introduction to Multicultural Studies

Arte Popular Brasileira como Possibilidade de Um Ensino Multicultural das Artes Visuais

The present article establishes an overview of the relationship between culture and the teaching of Art in Brazil, reflecting about multiculturalism in the teaching of Visual Arts through Folk Art. It is based on a literature review, analysis of works of art and their relation to multicultural issues. The study highlights the importance of Folk Art as a source of multicultural studies, as well as the need to deal with these issues within the school environment. There has not been much discussion about the topic, especially regarding Folk Art. The research concludes that it is possible to teach multicultural Art through an approach of the Folk Art, as it enables a better approximation to the learners’ universe and contribute for the development of their critical, reflexive and esthetic abilities.

PENDIDIKAN ISLAM MULTIKULTURAL DALAM PERSPEKTIF FILOSOFIS

Since the years 1950 of multicultural education discourse. The reason involves the issue of racism and discrimination against minority groups originating from Africa. 1970s discourse becomes stronger, such as in America, England, Germany, and others. 1980 is seen as the beginning of the emergence of multicultural educational institutions, as initiated by James A Banks et al. The idea of multicultural education is gaining momentum globally as recommended UNISCO in October 1994 in Geneva Switzerland. Among mulikultural educational thinkers of the West, like James A Banks, L. Derman-Sparks, Dawn Gill, Geneva Gay, Christine Sleeter, Peter McLaren, Donna M. Gollnick, Philip Chinn, Will Kymlica, G. Shin and P. Gorski,. Islamic thinkers who carries a lot of Islamic education multicultural issues, such as Fazlur Rahman, Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im, Mohammed Arkoun, Muhammad Shahrour, Humayun Kabir, and 'Ali Shari'ati, and Mamadiou Dia. Of Indonesia, such as Mansour Fakih, H.A.R. Tilaar, Nurcholish Madjid, Azyumardi Azra, and M. Amin Abdullah. Their sincerity in spreading the idea of multicultural education must be bad sometimes, like humuman sentenced to death, was expelled from the country or convicted of apostasy by its opponents. Islamic multicultural education is a response to a variety of global discourse, especially intercultural and multicultural studies that have been developed in the United States and Erofa caused by discriminatory attitudes in the majority to the minority. As in America and Erofa, multicultural Islamic education aims to build a tolerant attitude, pluralistic, humanistic and inclusive towards fellow human beings. But not infrequently Islamic multicultural education has also become a tool for the control authorities, as happened in the world of education in Indonesia in the New Order era. This article is intended to elaborate on Islamic multicultural education in a philosophical perspective.

A multicultural study of biometric privacy concerns in a fire ground accountability crisis response system

Biometric technology is rapidly gaining popularity as an access control mechanism in the workplace. In some instances, systems relying on biometric technology for access control have not been well received by employees. One potential reason for resistance may be perceived privacy issues associated with organizational collection and use of biometric data. This research draws on previous organizational information handling and procedural fairness literature to frame and examine these underlying privacy issues. Perceived accountability, perceived vulnerability, and distrust were distilled from the previous literature as the primary dimensions of employee privacy concerns related to biometric technology. This study assesses the effects of these privacy concerns, how they vary based on the cultural influences of Anglos and Hispanics.Fire ground accountability is a critical management objective in the firefighting domain. In multi-unit or multi-agency crisis response scenarios, the on-scene incident commander tracks and accounts for each first responder. This research designed and deployed a new fire ground accountability system that tracked firefighters through finger pattern-based biometric logins to their assigned positions on the firefighting apparatus. An instrument measuring level of privacy concern on three underlying dimensions and demographic data was developed, validated and administered in a quasi-experimental field study. A pre-test–post-test survey methodology was employed to detect potential differences in privacy concerns as familiarity with the system increased. The study shows that Anglo and Hispanic subjects frame privacy issues differently associated with use of biometric technology in a fire ground accountability system. Finally, the study showed that some privacy concerns such as distrust and perceived vulnerability can be alleviated through system use with changes in post-use privacy concerns moderated by ethnic affiliation.