TYPE VERSUS STEREOTYPE: AN ANALYSIS OF INTERNATIONAL COLLEGE STUDENTS’ PERCEPTIONS OF US CITIES AND PUBLIC SPACES

Author(s):  
Dorna Eshrati

In their minds, people have images of places they have never visited. In the twenty-first century, the constant exposure to media has had a great role in shaping people’s perception of foreign places. Despite the revealing aspect of media, they also play an important role in creating misconceptions about other countries. This paper explores international college students’ perceptions of United States cities and public spaces before and after coming to study in the US. It also investigates the role of media and representations in shaping their conceptions or misconceptions of the US. Forty-one Kansas State University international students from different countries participated in an online survey about their perceptions of US building types, infrastructure, and governance/policy regarding the built environment. About 58% of the participants claim that their image of US cities and public spaces changed after studying there; with only 15% claiming that US cities and public built environment are shown “like they are” in their home countries. Small US cities have a poor image in international students’ perceptions in comparison to the rich image of big cities most notably New York City. This paper not only argues that peoples' perceptions of places can change after visiting them in person, but also it highlights the role of media in creating misconceptions about foreign places. The findings can highlight the importance of media in managing city branding.

Author(s):  
Clémentine Berthelemy

This chapter intends to discuss the experiences of international college students regarding racial prejudice on campus and explore the role of student associations as a way to increase cross-cultural interactions between domestic and international students. The aim is to examine how prejudice, more specifically racial-ethnic prejudice, affects their college experience. The findings suggest that active involvement in campus activities promote interaction across cultures and reduce racial prejudice. This chapter engages qualitative individual interviews with Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Nigerian, Kenyan, and Ghanaian undergraduate international students (N=31). It is believed that this method is best suited to apprehend their experiences and to fully understand how they create meaning of perceived racial prejudice. Their testimonies are presented through verbatim transcripts of the interview sessions conducted in 2014-2015, in three New York research universities. A discussion of their experiences follows and suggestions for future research conclude this chapter.


2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 165-191
Author(s):  
Alexander Jones ◽  
Young Kim

Set in the context of four-year colleges and universities in the United States and Canada, this study examined how the level of thriving differs for international students and their domestic peers, how the level of thriving differs across various subgroups within international students, and how academic self-confidence is associated with the level of thriving for international students. Using data from the 2017 Thriving Quotient, this study found that international students were less likely to thrive during their college years than their domestic peers and that Asian international students were less likely to thrive than their international peers of other racial groups. Findings also suggested that academic self-confidence was significantly and positively related to international students’ thriving during their college years.


Author(s):  
Clémentine Berthelemy

This chapter intends to discuss the experiences of international college students regarding racial prejudice on campus and explore the role of student associations as a way to increase cross-cultural interactions between domestic and international students. The aim is to examine how prejudice, more specifically racial-ethnic prejudice, affects their college experience. The findings suggest that active involvement in campus activities promote interaction across cultures and reduce racial prejudice. This chapter engages qualitative individual interviews with Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Nigerian, Kenyan, and Ghanaian undergraduate international students (N=31). It is believed that this method is best suited to apprehend their experiences and to fully understand how they create meaning of perceived racial prejudice. Their testimonies are presented through verbatim transcripts of the interview sessions conducted in 2014-2015, in three New York research universities. A discussion of their experiences follows and suggestions for future research conclude this chapter.


Author(s):  
Torunn Skofsrud Boger ◽  
Anne-Lise Eng

Autumn 2008, four employees at Østfold University College (HiØ), one with a Master's Degree in Sosiology, one with a Master's Degree in Nursing and two librarians, interviewed 33 Norwegian College students about the subjects cheating and plagiarism. This is the first such survey conducted in Norway. There are plenty of comparable reseach from countries such as the US, Great Britain, Canada and even Sweden, but the Norwegian focus on these issues has been missing until a few years ago. We started working with this subject about two years ago, about the same time as some incidents of cheating at a private College and a University Faculty got national interest, and HiØ started to review some of the effects of the reform Kvalitetsreformen. Our survey is part of this project named "Kvalitetsreformens vurderingsformer i høgskolen" (http://www.hiof.no/index.php?ID=14004=nor). Some of the topics treated in our survey are collaboration and collusion, consequenses of cheating, information given to students about plagiarism and the role of the libraries. We find that students, staff and teachers care about these subjects, but perhaps in slightly different ways and with different perspectives. Our aim is to let the students speak, and try to listen and understand, and hopefully find some ideas or starting points to start work with. Many colleges and universities are starting working with plans to deal with these issues, and we believe it is important to include the student perspective in this work. We are planning to release our research in a report in the HiØ's Report Series spring 2010.


2016 ◽  
pp. 79-108 ◽  
Author(s):  
Konrad Matyjaszek

The rules of the reservation. On the book Jewish Poland Revisited by Erica Lehrer The paper offers a review of Erica Lehrer’s Jewish Poland Revisited, a publication presenting outcomes of an anthropological research on Jewish-Polish memory projects in Cracow's former Jewish district of Kazimierz. In a discussion of the book's theses, the author critically analyses Lehrer's postulate of 'ethnography of possibility' and the resultant strategy of approval for contemporary Kazimierz as a 'space of encounter' alongside with its rules of participation, imposed by the Polish proprietors of the district on its visitors.The article focuses on two such rules that condition a visitor’s possibility of participation in shrinking public spaces of Kazimierz. First of these laws is discussed as an imperative of abandoning the immediacy of district's physical space and its histories signified by the surviving built environment. Instead, Lehrer introduces a conceptual division of "social" and "physical" spaces, which leads to silencing of otherwise immediately present evidence of the violent past. The second rule is analyzed as a requirement of accepting the contemporary Polish owners’ role of 'brokers" and "purveyors" of Jewish heritage, consequential with an approval of a doubtful legal and moral title to the appropriated spaces.Through focusing on these rules of participation that determine and perpetuate the conditionality of Jewish presence in the space of Kazimierz, the author argues for a necessity of questioning and re-defining the traditional divisions of disciplines that establish conceptual separations of "social" and "built" spaces, as well as for a necessity of a critical outlook on contemporary Central European understandings of "heritage". Such an inquiry is discussed as conditional for overcoming the largely avoided yet still present "heritages" in the history of Polish-Jewish relations: the traditions of violence and exclusion, either social and spatial. Regulamin rezerwatu. O książce Jewish Poland Revisited Eriki LehrerArtykuł stanowi recenzję książki Jewish Poland Revisited Eriki Lehrer, prezentującej wyniki antropologicznych badań na temat żydowsko-polskich projektów pamięci realizowanych w byłej dzielnicy żydowskiej na krakowskim Kazimierzu. Omawiając tezy pracy, autor poddaje krytycznej analizie proponowany przez Lehrer projekt etnografii możliwości i wynikającą z niego strategię akceptacji współczesnego Kazimierza jako przestrzeni spotkania, za którą idzie akceptacja zasad uczestnictwa narzuconych gościom przez polskich zarządców Kazimierza.W artykule rozpatrywane są dwie takie zasady, warunkujące możliwość uczestnictwa gościa w kurczącej się przestrzeni publicznej Kazimierza. Pierwszą z nich autor opisuje jako nakaz porzucenia bezpośrednio dostępnej, fizycznej przestrzeni dzielnicy i niesionych przez nią historii, których znakiem jest ocalała zabudowa. W to miejsce Lehrer wprowadza podział na przestrzeń społeczną i fizyczną, skutkiem czego stłumione zostają ślady brutalnej przeszłości, w przeciwnym razie bezpośrednio obecne. Drugą zasadę autor odtwarza jako wymóg akceptacji roli współczesnych polskich właścicieli jako brokerów i pośredników żydowskiego dziedzictwa, co w konsekwencji pociąga za sobą akceptację ich wątpliwych prawnie i moralnie roszczeń do zawłaszczonej przestrzeni.Skupienie uwagi na regulaminie uczestnictwa, który ustanawia i utrzymuje warunkowy charakter żydowskiej obecności w przestrzeni Kazimierza, prowadzi autora do wniosku o konieczności rewaluacji i redefinicji tradycyjnego rozdziału dyscyplin, który tworzy konceptualny podział na społeczne przestrzenie i architektoniczne obiekty, oraz do krytycznego namysłu nad obowiązującym obecnie w Europie Środkowo-Wschodniej rozumieniem pojęcia „dziedzictwo”. Tego rodzaju poszukiwanie uznaje autor za warunek przezwyciężenia ignorowanego zwykle, choć mimo wszystko obecnego w polsko-żydowskich stosunkach „dziedzictwa”: tradycji przemocy i wykluczenia, tak społecznego, jak i przestrzennego. 


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nanda Meg Ryan Puspitasari Supriyono ◽  
Moses Glorino Rumambo Pandin ◽  
Nurul Fadilah ◽  
Alvina Nuraeni ◽  
Chica Friskilla

Background: The development of technology has encouraged a more developed civilization. However, one of the impacts is causing low students’ interest in literature. In this case, optimizing digital media is one way of developing literary works. Based on this problem, the researchers set the question: What is the role of the podcast "Sandiwara Sastra" as an alternative to developing Indonesian literary works?. Purpose: This study aims to increase students' interest in literature and make the delivery of literary works flexible. Method: This study uses a qualitative descriptive method. The qualitative method uses an online survey that focuses on respondents' opinions with 44 college students. The sample criteria used are college students aged 19-25 years and have listened to podcasts. Then, the researcher used the interview method using ten interviewees to strengthen the results of the online survey analysis. Results: The role of the "Sandiwara Sastra" podcast can influence students' interpretations to study literature more flexibly and increase their interest in literature. Recommendation: This study is expected to increase college students' understanding and interest in literature through digital podcast media. Limitation: The limited variety of respondents who only cover college students, so generalization needs to be improved


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Katie Koo ◽  
Ian Baker ◽  
Jiyoon Yoon

We analyzed 192 first year international college students in Mid-Atlantic region to examine change of international students’ acculturative stress, adjustment, and collegiate experiences during their first year in the U.S. higher education. We found that male students, students from low socio-economic status, and students majored in humanity showed higher rate of acculturative stress and lower rate of satisfaction with college experiences compared to their counterparts. International students reported decreased acculturative stress and homesick, and increased English proficiency, social connectedness, and satisfaction with college experiences during the last week of the first year compared to the first week of their first semester. Satisfaction with college experiences, English proficiency, social connectedness, and self-esteem were significant predictors of acculturative stress. Lastly, acculturative stress in the first week of the first year and satisfaction with college experience in the last week of the first year were on each other reciprocally over one year internal.


Author(s):  
Oluwasola Stephen Ayosanmi ◽  
Lorette Oden ◽  
Titilope Ayosanmi ◽  
Babatunde Alli ◽  
Mei Wen ◽  
...  

Objectives: We sought to determine how the Health Belief Model (HBM) constructs relate to Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) screening decisions among international students and which of the HBM constructs was most relevant in those screening decisions. Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional pilot study using an online survey of international students at Western Illinois University in the United States. Participants signed electronic informed consent. The online survey comprised of questions that assessed their sociodemographic characteristics, acceptance of HIV screening, and perceived knowledge of HIV. The survey also determined the role of perceived benefits, perceived threat, and cues to action in making HIV screening decisions among the study population. Results: Four hundred and ninety students were invited to participate in the survey out of which 185 responses were obtained. In all, 107(57.8%) were males, and 78(42.8%) were females. Most of the respondents were from Asia (64.9%) and Africa (24.9%). The prevalence of acceptance of HIV screening among international students was found to be 73.5%. About 90% of the participants perceived HIV screening to be beneficial to their health, and 76% of them would accept the screening because they were offered. The majority (83%) of participants who said that they would not accept HIV screening, were also not sexually active, and they did not think they could be susceptible to HIV. Conclusion and Implications for Translation: Perceived benefits and cues to action were found to be the significant factors that informed the decision of people who accepted to be screened for HIV. Perceived susceptibility informed the decision of those that rejected the screening. Caution is warranted in generalizing the findings from this study because of the limited sample size; however, we are confident that our findings are reproducible in a larger population context. Key words: • HIV • HIV screening • Decision • Acceptance • Perceived benefit • Perceived threat • Perceived susceptibility • Health belief model • International students   Copyright © 2020 Ayosanmi et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.


2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 815-833
Author(s):  
Silvia Alves Nishioka ◽  
Defne Akol

This mixed-method study examined whether Brazilian students in the US use an indigenous problem-solving practice, jeitinho, as a coping strategy for acculturative stress. Forty-two participants answered an online survey, which was a culmination of demographic information, the Acculturative Stress Scale for International Students, BriefCOPE, jeitinho questionnaire, and three open-ended questions about how Americans may perceive jeitinho. Results showed that a negative dimension of jeitinho was associated with nonadaptive coping strategies, but it was not a significant predictor of acculturative stress. Qualitative themes highlighted the multidimensionality of jeitinho, which could help in students’ adjustment (positive) or reinforce stereotypes and prejudices (negative) against Brazilians. Findings elucidate the complexity of jeitinho Brazilian students can be mindful about and when to use it to avoid stereotyping.


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