Book Review

The book, Educating Chinese-heritage students in the global-local nexus: Identities, challenges, and opportunities, edited by Guofang Li and Wen Ma, provides a significant addition to the current need for a better understanding of Chinese immigrant literacy learning around the world.

Interpreting Religion with Cultural Heritage Students

The issue of exhibiting religious objects exemplifies challenges faced by heritage professionals today: How can various ways of appreciating cultural heritage be facilitated? How to support different forms of interpretation and learning? Furthermore, how to create empathy for people in other times, other places and other cultures? The elective course Cultural Heritage & Religion introduces students of the Reinwardt Academy (Amsterdam University of the Arts) to the material culture of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, and stimulates them to formulate a stance regarding the potential as well as pitfalls of the presentation of religious objects. Museums sometimes seem to opt for a neutral, a static, and an aesthetic approach in the presentation of religious objects. However, it is important to note that museum displays that only highlight the art-historical or cultural-historical value of religious objects are all but neutral. Part of the story remains hidden, and therefore the full potential of these objects remains unused. Inspired by a combination of literature study, interactive seminars, and excursions to museums with religious object collections, as well as visits to Jewish, Christian, and Islamic places of worship, students suggest different approaches: Museums have the potential to touch and reach new audiences with religious objects by providing space for multiple interpretations and personal stories, and by including sensorial and emotional stimuli in the exhibition’s design. As religious objects express both the highs and lows of life, they can function as mirror images with which diverse, contemporary audiences can identify.

“Do you eat dog meat and monkey? . . . I didn’t know anything about China back then”: Problematising Chinese heritage students through the lens of critical interculturality

Universities throughout the world contain people of Chinese heritage studying, researching or working in higher educational institutions. This paper offers a case study example from a higher education institution in China in analysing the fluctuating identity positions of Chinese heritage students. From a critical intercultural perspective, the study explores Chinese heritage students’ reflexivity about perceptions of their own Chineseness and foreignness. The paper argues against labeling or categorizing Chinese heritage students as local or international students as the notions are biased insofar that they negate the possibility for identity. Thus, a critical intercultural lens is used as a way to problematise a deeper engagement into dialogues about the self and the other. The paper also problematises the implications the study has for teacher education in terms of attempting to move beyond essentialist logics and practices in how Chinese heritage students are understood and researched.

Motivation and the Support of Significant Others across Language Learning Contexts

According to Self-Determination Theory, intrinsic and self-determined extrinsic motivation are maintained to the extent that learners feel that engagement in an activity is a personally meaningful choice, that the task can be performed competently, and that they share a social bond with significant others in the learning context. These perceptions are enhanced when significant others act or communicate in a way that encourages learner autonomy, provides informative feedback on how to improve task competency, and establishes a sense of connection with the learner. The present study used a focused essay technique to examine how the learning context impacts learners’ motivation and the kinds of support (or lack thereof) received from different people. Heritage (n = 34), modern (n = 34), and English-as-asecond-language (ESL; n = 36) learners described their reasons for language learning, and reported how teachers, family members, peers, and members of the language community encouraged or discouraged their engagement in language learning. The results indicated that heritage students are more included to learn the language because it is integral to their sense of self than the two other groups, whereas ESL students are generally more regulated by external contingencies. Although there were some commonalities, different people supported learners’ motivation in different ways depending upon the learning context. The results point to the importance of the language learning context for understanding students’ motivation and how others can support them.

Spanish Composition Errors from a Combined Classroom of Heritage (L1) and Non-heritage (L2) Learners: A Comparative Case Study

In a world of declining institutional budgets, decreasing student enrollments in departments that until now may have had the luxury of separate composition classrooms for heritage and non-heritage students, not to mention individual student schedule limitations, the steady increase in enrollment of L1 or heritage students in composition classrooms which were before primarily geared toward L2 learners has created a new reality and the urgency to rethink the organization, sequence, and emphasis placed on topics and structures in the classroom. The purpose of this case study was to conduct a comprehensive analysis of L1 and L2 student composition error data collected from a sample of fifteen students enrolled in a Spanish Composition (SPAN 302) class at the University of Northern Colorado (UNC). Specific objectives for this project were to determine from the data collected: 1) the frequencies with which L1 and L2 student participants committed word- and sentence-level errors in their compositions; 2) how error frequencies compare between L1 and L2 students over a semester’s time, and in particular, with the writing of a series of five different compositions, each targeting a more advanced level of writing proficiency; and 3) how knowledge of both similarities and differences between these two groups might be applied to enhance the author’s current pedagogical model that could work for future students from both groups in a single classroom.