Wednesday, August 26, 2015

A to Z: Cultural Perspectives in Education

Vaughan M. Blaney
Director
BSc(UNB,Canada), BEd(UNB,Canada), TEFLA(University of Cambridge), MEd(HKU, Hong Kong)

Book: "A to Z: Cultural Perspectives in Education"


The Letter 'Z'...

Zany poetry
Thought-provoking art
Each has different tastes
Yet all comes from the heart

Zealously we maintain our differences, still all can agree that we:
  • feel a zap if we touch electricity
  • know zucchini is healthy
  • have a zodiac sign
  • know that a zither is a musical instrument
  • like to draw a zigzag pattern
  • realize zero means ‘none’
  • know that zaire is the monetary unit in Zaire
  • think zinnia is an unusual name for a plant
  • recognize a zorilla as an animal from Africa
  • know how to print the letter Z

We found that culture/person exchanges are mediated not only by language, visual means or actions but also, at a subconscious level, by an affectively charged conglomerate of representations, figures and experiential memories that we called background thinking. When a person speaks or thinks about any meaningful group, men, women, Black, White or whatever, the content of emotional memories, desires, interests is subconsciously activated at the periphery of consciousness.

We could describe background thinking in the area of personal and social identity, as a compression, experienced subconsciously, of all the contexts in which words, representations, or actions dealing with Self, Alter and society have occurred under conditions of affective arousal. When we display this “compressed material” through the method of representational contextualization, we find an invariant structure that I have called the affective-representational circuit, and the content of this structure, evolves in a continuous resonance with the world.


Zavalloni, Marisa

Thursday, August 20, 2015

A to Z: Cultural Perspectives in Education

Vaughan M. Blaney
Director
BSc(UNB,Canada), BEd(UNB,Canada), TEFLA(University of Cambridge), MEd(HKU, Hong Kong)

Book: "A to Z: Cultural Perspectives in Education"

The Letter 'Y'...



You can see that we are different
Your culture, my face
But when we learn to get along
Our world becomes a better place

You and I and others are different – that is plain to see – still all can agree that we:
  • live in the same year
  • wake-up to a yesterday
  • tend to yackety-yack to one another during recess
  • yawn when we are tired
  • enjoy trying a yoyo
  • think our favourite foods are yummy
  • know what is young and what is old
  • shout yes when the teacher asks if we can help
  • believe the sun is yellow
  • know how to print the letter Y


In my view, the most significant contributions made by transnational institutions like McDonald’s is that people can use them as bridges to other cultures. In the present case, it is American culture that makes the Beijing McDonald’s ultimately attractive to Chinese consumers. The customers want a “taste” of America, and the outcome of their pursuit is the creation of a Chinese version of American fast food culture. McDonald’s success in Beijing can therefore be understood only in the context of this localization process. Given the centuries-long development of Chinese cuisine, it is only natural that foreign foods have undergone the transformative process of localization. It is also tempting to predict that, twenty years from now, the “American” associations that McDonald’s carries today will become but dim memories for older residents. A new generation of Beijing consumers may treat the Big Mac, fries, and shakes simply as local products.


Yan, Yunxiang

Tuesday, August 11, 2015

A to Z: Cultural Perspectives in Education

Vaughan M. Blaney
Director
BSc(UNB,Canada), BEd(UNB,Canada), TEFLA(University of Cambridge), MEd(HKU, Hong Kong)

Book: "A to Z: Cultural Perspectives in Education"


The Letter 'X'...



Xian’s 祖父母 live with his family
Judy’s far from home
With your grandparents in your heart
You’ll never be alone

Xerox copies of one another we are not, still all can agree that we:
  • know that xi is a letter in the Greek alphabet
  • like the sound of a xylophone
  • know that Merry Xmas means Merry Christmas
  • know that Xhosa is a language
  • have an X-chromosome
  • know that xenon is one of the elements on Earth
  • know that an x-ray machine can be found in a hospital
  • think that xeranthemum is a big world for a flower
  • know that xenophobia is often compared to racism
  • know how to print the letter X

The emerging research on popular culture in relation to literacy sheds light on how students interact outside of school with print and no-nprint texts that are uniquely meaningful to them in a cultural and linguistic way (Alvermann & Hagood, 2000; Alvermann, Moon, & Hagood, 1999; Buckingham, 1993; Buckingham & Sefton-Green, 1994; Chandler, 1999; Finders, 1997; Gee, 2000; Lewis, 1998; Luke, 1998). Dyson’s (1993, 1997) work with teachers who supported diverse students’ integration of popular culture into their reading and writing experiences at school suggests a crucial role for popular culture in students’ acquisition and exercise of skills in multiple literacies (ie. print and non-print text such as icons, images, and multimedia found on the internet and in TV shows, music and music videos…etc.). If these teachers had focused on teaching traditional print literacy and had not allowed their students to write and act out stories about superheroes, popular songs, and so on, the students’ rich literacy knowledge might not have been apparent. Thus, it seems important that teacher education courses emphasize the need for preservice and inservice teachers to become knowledgeable about their students’ experiences with popular culture, to examine the multiple literacies involved in interactions with popular culture, and to explore ways to integrate popular culture into teaching.


Xu, Hong Shelley

Monday, August 3, 2015

A to Z: Cultural Perspectives in Education

Vaughan M. Blaney
Director
BSc(UNB,Canada), BEd(UNB,Canada), TEFLA(University of Cambridge), MEd(HKU, Hong Kong)

Book: "A to Z: Cultural Perspectives in Education"

The Letter 'W'...





Welcome, bow, namaste, smile, nod
Kiss on the cheek, noses together, mano po
Pat on the head, annyong ha shimnikka
All of these to say hello

With all our differences, all can still agree that we:
  • wish for joy in the world
  • love to wake-up to a golden sunrise
  • know right from wrong
  • work to the best of our abilities in class
  • believe our teacher is wise
  • like to win in games
  • brush our teeth to keep them white
  • wear our very best on special occasions
  • try to never waste our food
  • know how to print the letter W


From the very beginning of anthropology as an academic discipline, debates about the meaning of culture have united and divided anthropologists. Of late, the tone of this debate has become especially strident, separating the good from the bad, the enlightened from the ignorant. In its earlier usage culture was defined by most anthropologists as a shared set of beliefs, customs, and ideas that held people together in coherent groups. In recent decades, however, the notion of coherence has come under attack by ethnosemanticists, who have discovered that people in supposedly close-knit groups (bands of hunters, factory workers, bureaucrats) do not share a single system of knowledge. Culture, therefore is not something that people inherit as an undifferentiated bloc of knowledge from their ancestors. Culture is a set of ideas, reactions, and expectations that is constantly changing as people and groups themselves change.


Watson, James