Culture, Education, and Future

Ethnicity/race disparities in disciplinary consequences: A comparative analysis of White, Hispanic, and Black girls

James R. Anderson, John R. Slate — Wed, 25 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0300

In this multiyear investigation, the most frequently committed student misbehaviors were determined, and then the most common disciplinary consequences that were assigned as a result were identified as Grade 6 White, Hispanic, and Black girls. Differences were evident in disciplinary consequences that were assigned by the ethnicity/race of girls. Grade 6 Black and Grade 6 Hispanic girls were more likely to be assigned exclusionary discipline consequences, such as In-School Suspension, than were Grade 6 White girls. Grade 6 White girls were assigned consequences that did not interrupt learning, such as Lunch Detention and Detention Before School, much more often than Grade 6 Hispanic and Grade 6 Black girls. Grade 6 Black girls were assigned Saturday School more than twice as often as Grade 6 Hispanic girls and almost 8 times as often as Grade 6 White girls.

Meditative inquiry for educators: Understanding the significance of spirituality, contextual and cultural awareness, and organic change

Ashwani Kumar, James Caron — Wed, 25 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0300

This conversational paper explores the concept and practice of meditative inquiry in the context of teacher education. Meditative inquiry is a holistic approach to teaching, learning, researching, creating, and living. Due to its strength and versatility, meditative inquiry has been taken up in a variety of educational settings (Kumar, 2022). By employing dialogical meditative inquiry (Kumar & Downey, 2018), which aims to delve deeper than a typical interview, the authors engage in a dialogue that probes into the significance of meditative inquiry for educators. Leaning into the authors’ experiences with secondary social studies and teacher education, this paper: 1) discusses philosophical and pedagogical aspects of mediative inquiry by examining the differences and similarities between critical reflection and meditative inquiry; 2) explores the significance of a spiritual perspective for social studies education; and 3) offer pointers on how teachers can adopt meditative inquiry in the context of classroom teaching.

Barriers and resilience: The impact of early marriage on girls’ education in Balochistan

Muhammad Arif, Aneta Ismail, Md Mirajur Rhaman Shaoan, Tebatso Namanyane — Wed, 25 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0300

Early child marriage is still prevalent in many parts of the world today, especially in areas like Balochistan, where this paper found cultural and socioeconomic factors play an influential role in early marriage. The purpose of this qualitative research is to examine the effect of early marriage on the education of young girls in Balochistan. Guided by the intersectionality framework and gender role theory, this research explores the educational disruption and psychosocial implications, as well as the community and family pressures undergone by these girls, with 10 participants interviewed. The evidence presented shows that regardless of the education achieved prior to marriage, girls drop out of school at the moment they get married and, depending on the custom, continue their education either sparingly or not at all, as their responsibilities shift to housekeeping and child raising. On self-perceived psychosocial impact, participants mentioned isolation, loss of self-esteem, and increased psychological stress as some of the major effects. The challenges were, however, compounded by social and cultural dictating that education for married girls was unnecessary as they were already expected to be wives and future mothers; in-laws also added to this by rejecting the girl’s education. Still, in these circumstances, the participants’ spirit and desire for change remained high; most of them wanted to go back to school if only they had a chance. Such findings underscore the importance of developing the appropriate programs and services that would facilitate the removal of barriers educationally and psychologically facing young married girls. This study has established the need to educate married girls and supply all the necessary encouragement they need to combat the difficulties that early marriage brings.

Explaining the curriculum planning challenges at Tehran University and providing a practical guide to improving the curriculum

Mohammad Javadipour, Somaye Rahimi — Wed, 25 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0300

A comprehensive and deep understanding of curriculum development is crucial in the field of higher education. Curriculum development, an important aspect in this field, requires a multifaceted approach. Using qualitative methodology, this study provides practical guidance for improving the curriculum of Tehran University by carefully examining the planning challenges. The research was carried out in several stages, culminating in the design of a practical guide to improve the curriculum. First, a review study was conducted on studies based on university curriculum models. Then, using the phenomenological strategy and unstructured interviews, this study investigated the concept of academic curricula and the challenges facing the higher education curricula planning system from the perspective of faculty members. In the final step, using the insights from the previous steps, a focus group was formed to develop a practical curriculum development guide. This guide covers three main dimensions: basic curriculum planning features, application-oriented features, and implementation requirements. This study used data triangulation to ensure the validity of the research findings, integrating the insights from interviews, document reviews, and academic consensus. The proposed model of the current research can serve as a suitable basis for revising the university curriculum. Diversity in the attitude and culture of the university is evident in the proposed model.

Understanding Chinese Principalship—An autobiographical approach

Wanying Wang, Fei Wang — Wed, 25 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0300

Cultural context matters in leadership. Traditions and cultures may saliently impact how leadership is conceptualized and enacted in practice. With the influence of Chinese traditions and culture, particularly Confucianism and Confucian culture, Chinese principal leadership may differ from the dominant leadership approaches that reign in the literature. Therefore, an in-depth understanding of leadership in a Chinese context is long overdue. Informed by an autobiographical approach, this study aims to explore a Chinese principal’s daily leadership practices. Autobiography renders accounts of layered reality, affords access to inner experiences, and unpacks the rationale in decision-making when engaging in the leadership process. The influence of various traditional (particularly Confucian) culture variables is crystalized through the subjective experience of the principal, as articulated in the autobiography and the analysis followed. This study provides an example of how traditional (particularly Confucian) culture permeates into a principal’s daily practice, including how the principal understands his role and deals with guanxi (network of relationships) using leadership tactics.

The role of relational resilience in classifying childhood abuse experiences among university students

M. Furkan Tunç, Erhan Tunç — Wed, 25 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0300

When the literature is analyzed, it is seen that childhood experiences are an important determinant for reactions in university ages. It is thought that this study will contribute to the related literature by drawing attention to the fact that childhood abuse experiences are also a determinant of university students’ relational resilience. This study examines the accuracy with which relational resilience categorizes university students who have been abused in childhood and university students who have not been abused. The research comprises 225 university students, 75 women and 150 men, aged 19-48 years, selected by convenience sampling. In the study, the Relational Resilience Scale and short information form were used to determine the relational resilience levels of the participants. Logistic regression analysis was performed on the data obtained from the data collection tools. The results of the analyses showed that relational resilience was able to classify university students with and without abuse experience with a correct prediction rate of 60.4%. It was observed that a 1-unit increase in the relational resilience variable caused a 3.30% increase in the abuse rate. This finding shows that relational resilience significantly contributes to categorizing individuals who have been victimized and those who have not been victimized. It was seen that relational resilience made a significant contribution to the classification of individuals who had been abused and those who had not been abused.

Qualities of papers we like: An editorial perspective

Russ Marion — Wed, 25 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0300

In this edition of Culture, Education, and Future, I think I can helpfully discuss the qualities we, the editors, seek in a paper. This discussion develops ideas that are not necessarily covered in author guidelines (see the CEF webpage); instead, these ideas reflect our preferences for the journal and the qualities that attract our attention. This editorial's audience is broad: It speaks to authors, reviewers, editors, and even those wanting to learn more about the dynamics of journal editors' decision-making.

The first quality we seek is CEF preference papers that are theoretically or conceptually current. I am not referring only to its applicability to today’s administrators or teachers—although that is important as well—rather, this refers to papers that are responsive to current theoretical trends and movements. In 2001, Hunt and Dodge wrote a piece for The Leadership Quarterly in which they argued that had they gone to sleep 20 years earlier and just awakened, they would have found that leadership theory had not changed in the intervening years. This was a clear call for a new perspective on leadership. Hunt’s voice was quite influential, and others were making similar grumblings. Anyone with their “ear to the ground” would have realized that the theoretical wind was shifting. What evolved was a set of perspectives that described leadership as a collective rather than an individual activity. Like Hunt, we, the CEF editors, are looking for a scholarship that is aware of trends and aware of where the pressure points are in current thought.

Second, to accomplish the first preference, we look for scholarship that demonstrates genuine expertise in the subjects developed in the paper. Of the many submissions I have read over the years, I find a depressing number that were obviously written by authors who exhibit a lack of mastery of the material they are discussing. They misinterpret or misapply ideas; they have not explored the weaknesses in the current literature on their subject, or they are not sufficiently mature in the subject to spot those weaknesses. For example, the literature on relationships between leaders and followers has been criticized for being ineffectively defined (i.e., it fails to clarify whether measures are defined as the perceptions of followers or as the differences in perceptions by leaders and followers; Gottfredson et al., 2020). Other submission authors may misunderstand incompatibilities between epistemologies, as when they use statistics (which assumes independencies among cases and stability across time) to evaluate a phenomenon that is clearly interdependent and changing; for more, see Cilliers, 1998).