Building Bridges in Classrooms: Collaboration for Integration and Globalization

International students are missing out on an immersive campus experience because they have few meaningful interactions with American students. This article describes three class projects with different instructors across different areas of study that sought to more successfully integrate international students while building a more global mindset in American students. Both groups of students in each of the three projects expressed positive experiences and a new outlook on the possibilities for relationships between international and domestic students on campus

Building Bridges in Classrooms: Collaboration for Integration and Globalization

International students are missing out on an immersive campus experience because they have few meaningful interactions with American students. This article describes three class projects with different instructors across different areas of study that sought to more successfully integrate international students while building a more global mindset in American students. Both groups of students in each of the three projects expressed positive experiences and a new outlook on the possibilities for relationships between international and domestic students on campus

Telling the Story of Stepfamily Beginnings: The Relationship between Young-adult Stepchildren’s Stepfamily Origin Stories and their Satisfaction with the Stepfamily

The current study adopts a narrative perspective in examining the content of 80 stepchildren’s stepfamily origin stories. Results reveal five types of stepfamily origin stories: Sudden, Dark-sided, Ambivalent, Idealized, and Incremental. Results support the hypothesis that story type would predict differences in family satisfaction; stepchildren who described their stepfamily origins as Idealized were more satisfied than those whose origins were Dark-sided or Sudden. Overall, participants framed their stepfamily identity more positively when their stepfamily beginnings were characterized by closeness, friendship, and even expected ups and downs, rather than when they were left out of the process of negotiating or forming the stepfamily and when the beginnings were tainted by issues they considered to be dark. Stepparents or practitioners may benefit from these findings by examining the means by which stepparents may involve stepchildren in the process of stepfamily courtship, facilitate closeness, and set up realistic expectations for negotiating stepfamily life

Empty Ritual: Young-Adult Stepchildren’s Perceptions of the Remarriage Ceremony

This qualitative study investigated 80 young-adult stepchildren’s talk about one of their parents’ remarriage ceremony. The remarriage event was celebrated in six types of ritual enactments, five of which celebrated the couple’s marriage and one of which was family-centered in its celebration of the beginning of the new stepfamily. Three factors led stepchildren to find the remarriage ceremony empty: (i) a ritual form that was too traditional or not traditional enough; (ii) a ritual enactment that failed to pay homage to either the stepchild’s family of origin or the stepfamily as a unit; and (iii) a ritual enactment that failed to involve the stepchild prior to and during the ceremony. Results support the characteristics of empty rituals posited in ritual theory