Cultural Developments
Asynchronous Session
Collaborative Online International Learning in Chemistry Classes at College and High School Levels View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Supaporn Kradtap Hartwell, Leslie Porter, Pattama Yanu, Kanchana Watla Iad
Intercultural competencies and ability to work with team members from diverse backgrounds are important skills in many lines of work including STEM fields. Despite its importance, inclusion of cultural topics in science classes is rare and has often been viewed as “out of context.” Students usually gain these experiences from study abroad programs. However, such learning opportunities are not available for all students due to barriers such as financial, time, rigid curriculum, and safety issues. Internationalization at home is a way to globalize the classroom and give students intercultural working experience at low to no cost. Here, collaborative assignments used in chemistry classrooms to connect US and Thai students and engage them in chemistry topics are presented. Best practices and points to consider when implementing the strategies based on perspectives of students and class instructors at college and at high school levels are discussed.
Morphological Properties of Czech Entrance Exam and School-leaving Texts View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Zaneta Stiborska, Lucie Radková, Michal Místecký
The goal of this contribution is to present some morphological traits that characterize texts to be found in tests used as entrance exams and secondary school-leaving exams in Czechia. To this end, we make use of a newly compiled 16,000-word corpus amassing the exam tests from the 2019–2023 period. The texts are subjected to key parts of speech and key grammatical tag analyses, which determine whether there are differences among various types of exam situations (eight-year secondary school, six-year secondary school, four-year secondary school, secondary school-leaving exam). In addition to these, we study case and grammatical number distributions, and frequencies of prepositional cases, perfective/imperfective verbs, verb tenses, and the passive forms. We hypothesize that more advanced exam texts utilize more items of autosemantic parts of speech (e.g., nouns, verbs), more prepositional cases, and more complex grammatical structures. The research outcomes may be of use to test makers, teachers preparing children to pass the exams, and authors of didactic reforms.
Network of Experiences for Transformation: Initiating the Development of a Collaboratively Designed Intercultural Curriculum in Chiapas View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Perla Suazo
This text initiates a reflection on the development of an intercultural, critical, and collaborative curriculum, drawn from the insights gleaned in a doctoral research thesis. We believe that this curriculum could serve to enhance the educational landscape for indigenous communities in Chiapas through the framework of standard education. The research method employed was biographical-narrative, engaging 8 co-researchers who shared their academic journeys in indigenous education from preschool through their higher education at the normal school. Among them were 4 teachers and 4 trainee teachers pursuing bachelor’s degree in Intercultural Bilingual Preschool or Primary Education (K-6) at the only Intercultural Bilingual Indigenous Normal School in Chiapas named "Jacinto Canek". Key findings revealed that intercultural education curricula in higher education has failed to incorporate the perspectives of the students themselves and lack content for them to effectively address diversity in practice. Specific gaps were identified in addressing the needs of multigrade groups and providing adequate preparation for indigenous children to receive truly bilingual education. Likewise, teachers who are sent to these communities must deal with the diversity they encounter in the classroom, and their preparation does not provide them with the foundations to address issues of children with special needs, gender issues, among other challenges for inclusive education.
