Dimensions of Culturally-Intensive STEM Education

Disenfranchisement of indigenous Pacific voices from STEM limits self-determination and the development of Pacific-led solutions to regional challenges. To counteract this trend, Chaminade University's Inclusive Excellence program delivers culturally-sustaining STEM education focused on sense of belonging and family/community engagement. It seeks to authentically enculturate curriculum, pedagogy, and practice to privilege and separate Western and indigenous epistemologies and to provide deeply immersive non-academic support. This chapter discusses the imperatives for sustained, system-wide commitment to culture-based STEM education, theoretical and cultural frameworks guiding this paradigm, examples of IE program processes and practices, and a review of outcomes. Finally, next level challenges are considered: student experiences in structurally racist systems beyond the Pacific support bubble, tensions between providing opportunity and perpetuation of regional talent drains, and the implications of asking young scientists to balance cultural and professional identities.

Diversifying the field: Activities to make linguistics more relevant

Students find linguistics at times abstract and intimidating and they have a hard time understanding how they can apply what they learn in our classes to the real world and how to relate their cultural/community experiences to it. As a consequence, we inadvertently restrict the pool of linguistic students. Inspired bywork done by Hudley et al. (2017), Trester (2017), Chávez & Longerbeam (2016), and by my personal experiences, I created a series of activities for my introduction to linguistics and syntax courses to respond to this problem. I offer some suggestions on how to make our linguistics courses more practical and relatable to our students, in particular first-generation students. The long-term goal is to organically engage and retain a diverse pool of students, thus enriching our field with their perspectives. We can achieve this goal by balancing teaching practices across cultural frameworks.

STRUCTURAL AND FUNCTIONAL APPROACH AS A METHODOLOGICAL BASIS FOR MODELING URBAN PLANNING SYSTEM OF ECOTOURISM TERRITORIES

Ecotourism territory is a specially protected natural area, whose function is the development of ecological tourism. The purpose of the development of the ecotourism territory is to preserve the natural and cultural heritage, with the recreational use of the territory. The contradictions that arise between the recreational use of the territory and the preservation of natural and cultural heritage lead to the need to manage the processes of recreational impact on the territory. The tool for solving the problem is a modeling method that provides the necessary synthesis of knowledge about the human environment. The complexity of the urban planning system of the ecotourism territory does not allow making urban planning decisions based on one comprehensive model. The system representation of the modeling object consists of an interconnected consideration of it from functional and morphological (structural) positions. Therefore, the structural and functional approach has become the methodological basis for modeling. It allows determining the main spatial patterns of the formation of a stable planning structure of the ecotourism territory. The structural-functional approach provides consideration of external environment of the ecotourism territory as a holistic formation - a territorial system. It makes possible to comprehensively evaluate and present it as the urban planning system. The functional decomposition of the urban planning system consists in a hierarchical division of functions into the main (preservation of natural and cultural heritage), subordinate main (recreational use of the territory) and additional (servicing visitors and territories). As a result, the sustainability of the planning framework structure depends on the preservation and restoration of the integrity of the ecological and eco-cultural frameworks of the ecotourism territory.

Organizational learning mechanisms for learning schools

Purpose Organizational learning (OL) has been conceptualized as a critical component in school change processes. Nevertheless, OL in the school context is still somewhat obscure and difficult to comprehend, thus it is rarely translated into operational structures and processes and later permanently sustained. The purpose of this study is to present the organizational learning mechanisms (OLMs) framework as an institutionalized arrangement for collecting, disseminating, analyzing, storing, retrieving and using information that is relevant to the performance of school systems. Design/methodology/approach First, the authors examine the previous research on OLMs as a conceptual framework for OL in schools; then the authors present the various validated measures of OLMs in schools; and finally, the authors suggest implications for principals, as well as future explorations of the issue. Findings While the literature on OL in schools acknowledges the mystification of the term and the difficulty in translating it into operative procedures in dynamic and complex contexts, OLMs, as an integration of structural and cultural frameworks, are conceptualized as scaffolding for the development of learning schools. Originality/value The OLMs’ (structural and cultural) framework of information processing may help schools develop and sustain learning communities aimed at fostering the continuous growth of students and faculty members alike.

“Her sort of trouble”

The chapter uses material from Vivien Leigh’s British Library papers to forge a new approach to histories of her struggles with mental health. The chapter examines how this particular aspect of her life is represented within the archive. As a case study, I analyze fan letters that were generated in response to press coverage of the breakdown Leigh suffered while filming Elephant Walk in 1953. The chapter shows how predominantly female fan writers corresponded with Leigh. In turn, they capitalized on the simultaneous intimacy and distance of the fan letter to create a platform for self-exploration. More broadly, the chapter considers the cultural frameworks in which such fan-inflected confession gestated. It reads the content of the letters against a backdrop of attitudes toward women’s mental health at this time.

Visible and “Invisible” Aspects of Historic Mediterranean Metropolises Perpetually Emerging through Augmented Reality

Alexandria and Istanbul, through diverse texts and writers, meet and intersect in their attempt to reconstruct and rebuild the metropolis’s character. Our method advocates spatiotemporal events in augmented literature that enable reflection of the palimpsest of historical frames. On a higher level, what we propose in this work is the dialogic field between the two metropolises, as it could be provided by novels’ chronotopes with the aid of augmented reality. We undertake a twofold task, to reveal the awareness of the connections between places and the connection and attachment of particular spaces, by unifying two approaches. First, Ecocriticism that comprises the ways in which novels express socio-cultural frameworks of the natural environment. The second approach is based on the strong interrelations of place engagement with collective and cultural memory. The linking of both urban, spatial geometry and topology with the waterscape for both metropolises, in our proposed conceptualization of a chronotope-based augmented continuum, endeavors to provide, firstly, the dialogic relations between the two metropolises, between each metropolis and the waterscape and, secondly, between urbanscape and waterscape and the novels’ fictional frameworks. Within the framework of the augmented reality, we synthesize the writers’ fictional cities with the factual surroundings of the metropolises in order to reconstruct the fragmented natural and architectural urban views in the continuity of the urban fabric, thus ending up proposing a dynamic repository of the metropolis landscape’s natural, collective and cultural memory.

The phenomenon of signed music in Deaf culture

Introduction. Music in the Deaf community is a socio-cultural phenomenon that depicts a specific identity and way of experiencing the world, which is just as diverse, rich and meaningful as that of members of any other culture. Objective. The aim of this paper was to point out the historical and socio-cultural frameworks, complexity, richness, specific elements, types and forms of musical expression of members of the Deaf community. Methods. The applied methods included comparative analysis, evaluation, and deduction and induction system. Results. Due to limitations or a lack of auditive component, the members of Deaf culture use different communication tools, such as speech, pantomime, facial expressions and sign language. Signed music, as a phenomenon, is the artistic form which does not have long history. However, since the nineties of the past century and with technological development, it has been gaining greater interest and acknowledgement within the Deaf community and among the hearing audience. Signed music uses specific visuo-spatial-kinaesthetic and auditive elements in expression, such as rhythm, dynamism, rhyme, expressiveness, iconicity, intensity of the musical perception and the combination of the role of the performer. Conclusion. Signed music as a phenomenon is an art form that incorporates sign poetic characteristics (lyrical contents), visual musical elements and dance.

The Creative Voice

This chapter analyses themes of hybrid diasporic Tongan identity in the individual talanoa shared by Tongan women that was captured in doctoral research, per the author. Special focus is put on issues of “individual freedom” and “the collective burden” of expressing voice in the “walk in two worlds” creatively and geographically between Tonga and New Zealand. Although the legal and cultural frameworks in Tonga are progressive and relatively liberal with regard to the promotion of gender equality, some laws and traditions discriminate against women, establishing gender inequalities. As this chapter demonstrates, these inequalities have had profound impacts on women and their agency. Tongan women have spearheaded efforts to bridge communal boundaries and challenge the increasing normalisation of male dominance by continuously expressing their voices, particularly through creativity. The following perspectives inform this exploration, which is deconstructed from the standpoint of a TIWI (Tongan Kiwi) woman.