Cultural Nuances for Immigrant Adolescents and Adolescents of the Third Culture Experience: A book review of Immigrant Youth in Cultural Transition: Acculturation, Identity, and Adaptation Across National Contexts

Cross-cultural children include Third Culture Kids (TCKs) and the children and adolescents whose families have immigrated to a new society. The book Immigrant Youth in Cultural Transition: Acculturation, Identity, and Adaptation Across National Contexts (Berry et al., 2012), was a multi-national and multicultural study that sought to explain how immigrant youth navigate among cultures, how they manage their multicultural experience as it relates to psychological and sociocultural adjustment, and how demographics, family variables, and cultural variables affect the immigration, acculturation, assimilation, and adaptation process for these adolescents. Many similar processes have been described in the TCK literature for TCK children, adolescents, and adults. The goal of this book review is to introduce the study, to discuss the overlay between the TCK and the immigrant literature, and to discuss how the developing literature on the immigrant community and TCKs could be valuable to each discipline while maintaining the distinctions of each group. Lastly, similarities and differences in acculturation profiles and experiences for TCKs and Immigrant youth were discussed (Berry, 1997, 2001; Pollock & Van Reken, 2003)

Talking beyond the text: identifying and fostering critical talk in a middle school classroom

The entire dissertation/thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file (which also appears in the research.pdf); a non-technical general description, or public abstract, appears in the public.pdf file.Title from title screen of research.pdf file viewed on (June 29, 2006)Includes bibliographical references.Vita.Thesis (Ph. D.) University of Missouri-Columbia 2004.Dissertations, Academic -- University of Missouri--Columbia -- Curriculum and instruction.This qualitative inquiry examined eighty-one transcribed student and teacher discussions and interviews and researcher field notes to determine the type of talk that occurred as the teacher invited small groups of students to take part in dialogue prompted by literature. Four themes emerged from the data: teacher's knowledge, processing time, various forms of scaffolding, and oral rubrics. During in-depth analysis of ten selected transcripts, additional themes of the nature of critical talk emerged. First, students explored critical concepts such as recognizing a need for action, becoming aware of injustices, and challenging the status quo. Also, student talk scaled the ladder of abstraction, offering concrete examples that made their discussions more applicable to their lives, while at the same time traveling up the ladder, abstracting the is sues to begin to explore larger more systemic causes of particular injustices. Second, some students believed that they were changed by the interactions while others felt as if they had gained new understandings of particular concepts, issues, or beliefs. A continuum of the type of student talk shows how students' talk moves among social talk, fundamental text talk, socio-interpretive text talk,critical talk, and critical conversations. As students traverse along the continuum, various needs can be met. As teachers recognize where students' talk is on the continuum, they can lead students to deeper literature study discussions. In order to help students take a more critical approach when discussing texts, teachers must scaffold the talk and provide the time for students to grapple with critical concepts