Rigor and Relevance

The term ‘differentiate' is often used in the field of education to signify the modification of learning based on student readiness, learning profile, and academic skills, with changes being made to the depth, pace, and breath of the process (instruction), content (curriculum), and product (students' work and assessments). This chapter will focus on differentiation as it relates to gifted culturally different students, with an emphasis on the inclusion of cultural considerations within learning profiles discuss the necessity of both rigor and cultural relevance in lessons, while also being affirmed by what is taught. The curricula and program challenges within general and gifted classrooms will also be discussed. A brief overview of Bloom's taxonomy and James Banks's multicultural curriculum model will be shared in addition to an overview of Ford's Bloom-Banks matrix along with a revised layout of Trotman Scott's color-coded layout of Ford's matrix with pros and cons for each matrix quadrant.

Learning From Our Ancestors

This chapter reflects on the challenges of criterion-referenced final examinations in higher education within the context of Micronesian cultural realities and suggests alternative approaches that may contribute more constructively to student success. The first explores the transformative role that mentor relationships can have on both student engagement and purposeful and meaningful faculty-student interaction. The second appreciates the powerful contribution that connectivity plays as professors work to create a community of scholars within their university courses. And finally, the authors highlight the value of publishing as a pedagogic tool within a university course that elevates the process of research and writing making the work all the more important and meaningful to students. All three approaches are particularly meaningful due to the cultural relevance of each to Micronesian people.

Twelve Chinese Zoosigns of Zodiak: Tradition and Modernity

The work is devoted to the origins and peculiarities of zodiac signs in the ancient Chinese tradition. The study is carried out within the frames of linguocultural approach towards interpreting animalistic metaphors, namely, the zoonyms of the twelve zodiac signs which in China, are used to characterize people concerning their date of birth and are passed on from generation to generation. Chinese zodiacs are based on the astronomic theory of constellations and human worship (idolatry) of totems. It focuses on the comparison of zoonym metaphors reflected as Chinese zodiac signs both in the Chinese and Russian languages proceeding from the theory of metaphor in modern cognitive aspect to detect similarities and differences, and as well, the study of cultural roots of zoonym metaphors revealed in the Chinese zodiac signs. The object of the study concerns zoonyms of zodiac signs possessing the relevant meaning in the Chinese zoological lexis. The work elaborates the definition of the notion zodiac, describes the processes of the genesis, formation and development of the Zodiac culture and its specific cultural relevance; according to the analysis undertaken, the means to differentiate twelve animals of the Chinese Zodiac, and those of Chinese fairy tales, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, in Russian - animals were discussed and verified as to I.A. Krylovs fables. The conclusion states that metaphors are determined by the language itself, and linguocultures of various nations are reflected in specific metaphors and other peculiarities.

Social Responses to a Changing Environment

Communities worldwide are facing environmental crises such as air pollution, water shortages, climate change, and other forms of environmental change and degradation. While technical solutions for environmental change are essential, so too are solutions that consider social acceptability, value cultural relevance, and prioritize equity and social justice. Social work has a critical and urgent role in creating and implementing macrolevel social responses to environmental change. The key concepts of environmental change, environmental and ecological justice, social vulnerability, and social responses are discussed. A description of the roles and skills unique to macro social workers for this effort is given, followed by examples of macrolevel strategies and interventions. Opportunities and directions for future social work responses to a changing environment are identified.

An SSI-Based STEAM Approach to Developing Science Programs

This study employed a multi-phased process to guide the development of an approach for integrating socio-scientific issues (SSI) and science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics (STEAM) education in a way that can reform how science is taught in schools to improve scientific literacy. This approach can help teachers connect science authentically to real-world issues that have social and cultural relevance to students’ everyday lives. To demonstrate how the approach could be used for curriculum development, the authors defined the dimensions and key principles of SSI-based STEAM teaching and translated the approach into a climate change program by using a 6E inquiry model, which emphasizes an “enactment” stage. This program was used to discuss the benefits and challenges of employing an SSI-based STEAM approach in classroom contexts. We conclude by discussing implications for using this approach to improve science learning opportunities in cross-cultural contexts, and we raise questions about the need for future research.

The Socio-Cultural Factors on Health and Illness - A Study

Our culture, not our biology, dictates which illnesses are stigmatized and which are not, which are considered disabilities and which are not, and which are deemed contestable meaning some medical professionals may find the existence of this ailment questionable as opposed to definitive illnesses that are unquestionably recognized in the medical profession in the medical field. The stigmatization of illness often has the greatest effect on the patient and the kind of care they receive. Many contend that our society and even our healthcare institutions discriminate against certain diseases like mental disorders, AIDS, venereal diseases, and skin disorders. All cultures have systems of health beliefs to explain what causes illness, how it can be cured or treated, and who should be involved in the process. The extent to which patients perceive patient education as having cultural relevance for them can have a profound effect on their reception to information provided and their willingness to use it. In Vietnamese culture, mystical beliefs explain physical and mental illness. Health is viewed as the result of a harmonious balance between the poles of hot and cold that govern bodily functions. Keywords: Life Style, Health, Education, Income, Occupation, Tradition, Beliefs. Illeness.

Beyond the Psychoactive Effects of Ayahuasca: Cultural and Pharmacological Relevance of Its Emetic and Purging Properties

The herbal preparation ayahuasca has been an important part of ritual and healing practices, deployed to access invisible worlds in several indigenous groups in the Amazon basin and among mestizo populations of South America. The preparation is usually known to be composed of two main plants, Banisteriopsis caapi and Psychotria viridis, which produce both hallucinogenic and potent purging and emetic effects; currently, these are considered its major pharmacological activities. In recent decades, the psychoactive and visionary effect of ayahuasca has been highly sought after by the shamanic tourism community, which led to the popularization of ayahuasca use globally and to a cultural distancing from its traditional cosmological meanings, including that of purging and emesis. Further, the field of ethnobotany and ethnopharmacology has also produced relatively limited data linking the phytochemical diversity of ayahuasca with the different degrees of its purging and emetic versus psychoactive effects. Similarly, scientific interest has also principally addressed the psychological and mental health effects of ayahuasca, overlooking the cultural and pharmacological importance of the purging and emetic activity. The aim of this review is therefore to shed light on the understudied purging and emetic effect of ayahuasca herbal preparation. It firstly focuses on reviewing the cultural relevance of emesis and purging in the context of Amazonian traditions. Secondly, on the basis of the main known phytochemicals described in the ayahuasca formula, a comprehensive pharmacological evaluation of their emetic and purging properties is presented.

Bach Anxiety

A recent Twitter post by the composer Nico Muhly aligns with a recurring trope of “Bach-ness” that defines Bach’s public mythic profile. This chapter focuses on similar images of Bach, whether visual or aural. Bach has been most commonly imagined in the popular consciousness as representing not the human but the superhuman, the inhuman, the dehumanized, and the sublime. One can sense in recent writings on Bach an anxiety about how well these attributes can continue to resonate in our current moment of political or cultural relevance tests, and about which works by Bach are most likely to thrive in this new postmodern media world. I will wonder aloud, with some trepidation, whether Bach’s public mythic profile, long solidified along Modernist lines as the encyclopedic mathematical mystic, is undergoing a broad, gradual change; indeed, if it needs to in order for his music to survive in a twenty-first-century media environment and amid a postmodern audience sensibility.

Henry Moore’s Narayana and Bhataryan: theatre of sacrifice

Henry Moore’s unpublished play Narayana and Bhataryan (c. 1919) was first performed in 1920 at Castleford Secondary School. Moore wrote, performed in and designed the programme for this play. Despite timely theatrical returns to Moore’s only surviving literary creation, this play has not yet been the subject of in-depth critical study. Using archival research, this article engages with the play’s early indication of Moore’s sculptural tendencies. It traces the play’s parallels with another play produced in the early twentieth century: Rabindranath Tagore’s Sacrifice. Doing so highlights the cross-cultural echoes that exist in Narayana and Bhataryan, its relationship to early twentieth-century global modernist movements, the thematic presence of posture, architecture, ritual and trauma, and the emergence of Moore’s lifelong concerns with the mother and child and the human body. This article places Moore’s play in critical relationship to his sculpture and introduces his lone contribution to the fabric of modern drama as having cross-cultural relevance in the 1980s when an exhibition of his work toured India.