The article discusses how a peer group culture in the school setting, embedded in conflicting fields of work and education, co-constructs student disengagement. Disengagement is traditionally linked with dropout and engagement with completion, but the study shows that this relation is not so linear. The data are based on a field study, where the…

This study examined the effects of gender, age, grade level, and the educational level of the mother and father on social appearance anxiety in Turkish adolescents. This was a cross-sectional study in which a simple random sampling method was used. Participants were 2,219 adolescents (1089 boys, 1130 girls) with a mean age of 12.76 years old (SD =…

First conceptualized in the 1960s, the term culture-bound disorders refers to a classification of mental disorders or syndromes that are considered specific or closely related to cultural factors and or particular ethnocultural groups. In Japan, two culture-bound disorders, "taijin kyofusho" and "hikikomori," have seized the…

The papers in this volume offer a sampling of contemporary efforts to update the portrayal of study abroad in the applied linguistics literature through attention to its social and cultural aspects. The volume illustrates diversification of theory and method, refinement of approaches to social interactive language use, and expansion in the range…

Action research is demanding, and often unpredictable. In this article, the author first introduces the context of her research on "Cultural Mathematics" and briefly describes the preparation for the course, with minimal comment on the methodology. She presents some of the challenges that arose during the course, using the categories…

The aim of the present study was to investigate the effect of cultural knowledge on improving Iranian EFL learners' listening comprehension. To achieve this purpose, out of 300 participants, 120 pre-intermediate language learners were selected based on their scores on a listening comprehension test and were randomly assigned to four groups. Each…

A growing internationally mobile community is served by international schools. Their students are seen as adjusting to moves by identity development, acquiring new values and norms through cultural influences from national, individual and perhaps global sources. This occurs by emotional attachment to significant others and subsequent adoption of…

In 2010, there was a slight decrease in the number of out-of school adolescents from 75 million in 2009 (UNESCO, 2009) to 71 million in 2010, of which 55% are girls (UNESCO, 2010). In Kenya, only 17% of girls have secondary education (CBS, 2004). This paper analyzes the role of families in girls' secondary education in two schools within Nairobi…

Adolescent African American females face multiple obstacles that hinder their educational success. High school completion and college attendance rates remain lower for African American females than those for other racial and gender groups, while pregnancy rates for African American teens are higher. Group work holds promise for meeting the…

In this article, Dyrness and Sepúlveda argue that in El Salvador, young people are participants in a diasporic social imaginary that connects them with Salvadorans and other Latinos in the United States--before they have ever left the country. The authors explore how this transnational relationship manifests in two school communities in San…

Over the past decade, school linking has become an important feature of the landscape of global learning and development education in England. Yet what is the actual relationship between having an international link with a school in the Global South and the school's broader curriculum learning activities on global and development issues? This…

As the "land of opportunity" and arguably the greatest country in the world, the United States continues to change--culturally, racially, and linguistically. Reports abound regarding the changing demographics of the country and its schools. Over a 2-decade span (1989-2009), the percentage of "minority" students in public…

This study developed and tested a new model of the forced choice dilemma (i.e., the belief held by some intellectually gifted students that they must choose between academic achievement and peer acceptance) that incorporates individual-level cultural orientation variables (i.e., vertical allocentrism and vertical idiocentrism). A survey that had…

In the course of reviewing a recent quantitative survey of approximately 1300 Swedish youths on subjects like religion and leisure activities, I came across a finding which seemed intriguing to me: some 50% of those identifying themselves as Muslims reported that they confided in their teachers (compared to only 5% of non-Muslims) for help with…

In recent years, the government of Taiwan has been actively promoting gender equality, the positive results of which are already apparent among the younger generation. This research examines the views of indigenous girls attending secondary school with respect to the gender divide in their traditional culture, whether or not they support the…