Assignment:
Education Across Cultures/ Midterm Examination
These are the midterm finalized questions. You will write about six of the following questions, given to you in the form of six sets. In each set you will have two options and you will write on one of the two. Preferred responses ( See the grading scale at the end of the midterm questions) provide an overview of the key ideas, are well-organized, and use pertinent evidence and supporting details from the source texts.
1. What is Winkleman's psychocultural model? In what ways does it offer advantages over traditional studies in challenging ethnocentrism and cultivating greater sensitivity to cultural awareness and diversity ?
2. Drawing on Levinson's Cultural Production of the Educated Person, define how the authors provide an insight into the concept of the educated person and the role of schooling. Apply the symbolic capital of Bourdieu to two other contexts to show how the notion of the educated person is culturally constructed.
3. Summarize the ways in which communicative practices and literacy events varied in the communities studied by Heath. Explain how these cultural practices and differences determine children's performance in school. What implications does this study have for instructional strategies in culturally heterogeneous classes?
4. Select six concepts or words from the cultures (one from each culture) we have studied such as wrugbe "the land of the dead"in Beng or rennai "perseverance" in Chinese. Explain the cultural significance of each term in socializing children into the moral values of their own culture.
5. According to Heath, what are the ways in which literary events and communicative practices in the three communities that she studied, affected children's performance in school?
6. What are some of the main key differences and similarities between the Japanese, Chinese, and American Pre-Schools when it comes to language socialization practices?
7. In reviewing "Preschool in Three Cultures" compare and contrast the ways each community views intelligence and education to demonstrate the relevance and significance of Levinson's assertion that the educated person is a cultural construct.
8. Contrast the socializing functions of Amish schooling with those of public schooling in terms of purpose, curriculum, ideology, and core values.
9. What are the variable roles of different languages in the Amish education and their significance in socializing individual members into the Amish society?
10. What specific cultural assumptions and miscommunications arising from motivations, cultural expectations, "nature", and the like did the Tiv bring to bear on the interpretation of Hamlet in "Shakespeare in the Bush" (Bohannen, 1966)?
11. Why is it important to observe classroom settings with an ethnographic eye? Describe ethnographic methods. What does such a method require in terms of methodology. Using examples from the studies we have read, explore the educational benefits of ethnography.