Autistic people report greater comfort socialising and easier communication with each other. Despite autism being stereotypically associated with lack of social motivation, an autistic community has been described briefly in the literature but is not well understood. Autistic community connectedness may play a role in promoting wellbeing for…

Objectives: Care providers are key agents in the lives of individuals with an intellectual disability (ID). The quality of their support can be affected by manifestations of stigma. This scoping review was conducted to explore studies that provide indications of care providers' stigmatization of people with ID. Methods: A structured search was…

The concept of power is a complex and often intangible aspect of the evaluation process that is frequently a focal topic among the conceptual evaluation literature concerning collaborative or culturally responsive evaluation (CRE) contexts. Unfortunately, there remains a significant theory to practice gap as power is often rarely addressed or…

This paper examines the popular representation of childcare in North America. The author argues that the influence of popular culture on society's beliefs about childcare is an unexamined area that should be addressed as part of the larger project to improve the status of childcare educators in North America and internationally. Through the…

Over the last two decades drama pedagogy has helped to lay the foundations for a new teaching and learning culture, one that accentuates physicality and centres on performative experience. Signs of this 'performative turn' in education are especially strong in the field of foreign/second language teaching. This volume introduces scholars, language…

Considering the arts model as a tool for promoting awareness, understanding, and support for people with autism and developmental disabilities, this paper discusses stories as a measure of societal thinking as well as a vehicle for societal change. The author's dual perspectives are shared as a researcher of books for children and young adults, as…

It is difficult to overstate music's persistent and uneasy relationship with homosexuality in Western society. Associated with femininity for centuries, particularly in North America, participation in music has been believed to emasculate and thus homosexualize men and boys. The linking of music to women and emotion (as opposed to men and reason)…

Some of the most male-dominated science, technology, engineering and mathematics occupations and degree programmes are found in the world's most affluent societies. This article assesses whether gender gaps in "attitudes" follow similarly surprising patterns. Multivariate analysis of eighth-graders' affinity for mathematics and…

For most children in North America, Halloween is one of the most exciting holidays of the year. But some critics insist that its emphasis on ready-made costumes, store-bought candy, and trick-or-treating seduces children into cultural passivity and socializes them to mindless consumption. These critics argue that trick-or-treating was an inherited…

Globalization has brought more and more peoples and societies around the world into contact with "international" standards of law, commerce, and communication. That process has also enabled a number of formerly underdeveloped societies to experience extraordinary patterns of economic growth, especially in the last third of the twentieth…

Seniors are routinely subjected to negative stereotypes regarding their physical and cognitive abilities. The power and prevalence of cultural stereotypes of aging essentially results in a "double-whammy" to seniors. First, they influence the way that seniors are treated by society. Second, cultural stereotypes affect how seniors see…