Cultural Constraints (cultural + constraint)

Distribution by Scientific Domains


Selected Abstracts


Learning Disabilities in Taiwan: A Case of Cultural Constraints on the Education of Students with Disabilities

LEARNING DISABILITIES RESEARCH & PRACTICE, Issue 3 2007
Shih-Jay Tzeng
Learning disabilities (LD) has been recognized as a category of special education in Taiwanese law since 1984, and policies ensure educational services for children and youth who have LD. The official definition and identification criteria established in Taiwan's laws closely correspond with those of the United States, but practice differs, largely influenced by the people's cultural and linguistic background. I discuss these legal and cultural features as well as other matters (e.g., growth and change in professional literature on LD). Compared to economically developed countries such as the United States, the educators in Taiwan implement identification procedures, placement, and services at a lower cost. Contents of implementation are introduced in detail. The prevalence rate of LD has been very low (<1 percent). I examine culture- and/or society-specific reasons for low prevalence, such as Chinese orthography, regular teachers' compliance with referral procedures, the education-first belief of parents, and problems with identification procedures. [source]


A European in Asia,

ASIAN JOURNAL OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 1 2007
Geert Hofstede
How culture-proof are the social sciences? Travelling in another continent, one meets culture's influences not only in the objects of social science research, but at least as much in the minds of the researchers. Researchers' problem definitions and choices of issues to be addressed and questions to be asked limit what they will find; they are a potential source of ethnocentric bias. A case example of the discovery of such a bias was the emergence of a fifth dimension of national cultures supplementing Hofstede's four, through Bond's Chinese Value Survey. In the area of personality research, a number of newer and older findings by Asian and European researchers suggest the need for expanding the ,Big Five' model of personality traits with a sixth factor, Dependence on Others, in order to make the model culturally universal. In general, researchers recognize primarily those aspects of culture for which their own culture differs most from others. For escaping from the cultural constraints in our own research we therefore need to trade ideas with colleagues from other parts of the world. In this respect, Asian researchers have an important role to play. [source]


Reconciling pedagogy and health sciences to promote Indigenous health

AUSTRALIAN AND NEW ZEALAND JOURNAL OF PUBLIC HEALTH, Issue 2 2000
Denise Main
Objectives: To increase knowledge and skills regarding Indigenous learning styles. To raise awareness within the tertiary education sector that Aboriginal students learn differently and that Indigenous cultures and pedagogy have validity and strength. To examine pedagogical strategies that assist both tertiary students capacity for learning and university lecturers' delivery and evaluation of teaching and learning strategies. Methods: A qualitative, ethnographic framework using personal observations, field and classroom experience, interviews and review of literature in the fields of education, public health and Indigenous cultural perspectives. Results: Aboriginal people are the receivers of services and programs that will be delivered, in the majority of cases, by university-educated, non-Aboriginal, professional health care providers. Indigenous students face specific challenges in obtaining an effective education for working in the Aboriginal and wider community in the field of public health; the challenges relate to culture, health paradigms and community. Conclusion: Lecturers in health and human science courses for Aboriginal students need to both examine and appreciate the cultural constraints on learning faced by their students within the context of mainstream curriculum, and to build on the large pool of knowledge and learning styles that Aboriginal society bequeaths to Aboriginal students. Implications: Academics can apply the cultural differences and knowledge base of the Indigenous community as a force to promote health through learning. [source]


Cosmopolitan Hagglers or Haggling Locals?

CITY & SOCIETY, Issue 1 2010
Cosmopolitan Discourses in Tunis, Salesmen, Tourists
Abstract There has been much debate about the definition of cosmopolitan, but little attention has been paid to the underlying opposition of cosmopolitans to locals. Based on ethnographic work in the medina of Tunis, this article suggests that categories of local and cosmopolitan are discursively created and that the categorization of specific groups shifts depending on the context. I focus on a group of salesmen in the medina's tourist trade. These salesmen categorize themselves as sophisticated individuals who know about, and adapt to, the cultural practices of different tourist groups. They describe tourists as ignorant and inflexible. By contrast the tourists describe themselves in cosmopolitan terms and the salesmen as culturally determined locals. I suggest that while the categorization of cosmopolitanism depends on the opposition of cosmopolitan to local, the two are not commensurate terms. While cosmopolitanism refers to a cluster of attributes that individuals or groups ascribe to themselves, status as a local derives from being viewed by those who consider themselves to be cosmopolitans. The relation of cosmopolitanism to localness echoes earlier structured oppositions such as modernity to tradition, particularly with its implications of progress and homogeneity for the first category in contrast to the backwardness and heterogeneity of the second. By implication, cosmopolitans are sometimes seen as free from cultural constraints. I argue that cosmopolitanism is an ideological construction that always draws on specific contexts. Any group, given the appropriate circumstances, can be held as the local object of a cosmopolitan gaze. [source]