The international teacher—one who is teaching in a foreign land or teaching foreign students in his own country—is at a nexus of cultures, subject-specific knowledge, geopolitics, and economics. Globalisation of the higher education employment market, increases in overseas study rates, the advent of English as a dominant language of education and research, and the expansion of remote/distance learning have expanded opportunities for the sharing of information and ideas by educators and students. At the same time, these trends pose challenges that cannot be ignored by the physically, pedagogically, or virtually peripatetic teacher. This paper will consider the balancing act undertaken by teachers of Western origin (or educational provenance) who teach primarily or exclusively in English and who provide instruction to non-Western students either in Western or non-Western institutions, in-person or online. It will eschew contemporary neo-colonialist and neoliberal assumptions of knowledge transmission and development, reframing these experiences, obstacles, and opportunities within the historical narrative of the Indo-European knowledge exchange; the ancient tradition of itinerant preachers, mendicants, scholars, and schoolmasters; and the multi-polarisation of world power. Finally, teachers will be presented with a means of developing historically and culturally informed, robust, expedient, and sensitive didactic and discoursive techniques.<p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/edu_01/0222/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>
<p>Since the advent of low-cost modern media technologies (records, films, radio, television, and the internet), <em>popular culture</em> has both shaped and been shaped by complex economic, political, governmental, moral, and artistic concerns. <em>Fear and anxiety</em> and the human capacity to control, reduce, or induce them in others have been tools for influencing both individual and societal behaviours for far longer. At the juncture of these two are both opportunity and hazard. This paper will briefly consider the historical context of our current apprehensiveness and collective neuroticism from the early media age to the present and how anxiety has been used by significant power players and the nominally disadvantaged alike. It will then turn to the role of media technologies in distorting our understanding of risk, mortality, and the potential for (and the sustainability and importance of) happiness. Finally, it will present a series of suggestions to produce more resilient, realistic, and goal-oriented learners by cultivating within them a robust understanding of their mortality, the inevitability of suffering, and the tenuousness of the human condition. Much of the material and culture referenced will be from the United States; however, the observations and suggestions throughout this paper should be broadly applicable to the peoples of the developed world. Finally, this paper will include ample content and conversational suggestions, examinations of media context and interpretations, and questions for classroom discussion for the teacher who wishes to guide students towards a better-grounded mental state.</p><p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/soc/0097/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>
The last three decades of media expansion and technological innovation, encompassing the 24-hour media news cycle, the original desktop- and later site-based internet, gaming, social media, and the smartphone, have radically altered the means by which citizens of the developed and developing world access information and how they construct and maintain relationships. As the reach, robustness, ubiquity, and engagement potential of the two-dimensional world have expanded, those of the three-dimensional world have diminished (an effect accelerated during the COVID and post-COVID eras). As one world atrophies, a new one rushes in to fill the void. Celebrity culture; neoliberal economic policies; the decline of family, community, and organised religion; and the post-World War II suburbanisation and aesthetic sterilisation of shared spaces have all contributed to the decay and fragilization of the antecedent meat space (in-person) bonds. In their place, has risen the parasocial relationship—that between audience and performer or, in more modern terminology, content creator and content consumer. Why celebrities/content creators are loved is not the question to be posed herein. Notoriety, adulation, status, physical attractiveness, and charm—these all do much to explain why the famous and would-be famous alike are regarded with affection. Why they are hated—as they often are, if only by a portion of their audience—is less clear. This paper will examine the origins and utility of antagonistic parasocial relationships as well as the extent to which para-antisociality is harmful to content creators and consumers and what (if anything) can and should be done to manage hostility in parasocial relationships.<p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/soc/0009/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>
Despite setbacks to global commerce and communication over the last three years, the United States and China remain closely bound in the areas of science, technology, and commerce. Even if their economies decouple, such is likely to take years. In the meantime, academic exchange will continue. So long as this is the case, effective cross-cultural education is bound to be essential to the peace and welfare of the American and Chinese peoples. At the heart of effective education is understanding, both of the academic content being taught and the lens through which students process instruction and student/teacher and student/student interaction. This is a matter of culture. Existing theories of American and Chinese cultural differences focus on opposing family and community values and on the individualism/collectivism spectrum. None of these theories are inherently wrong, yet they are deficient in that they fail to account for the most fundamental dissimilarity: that between the inherently slow-moving, security-oriented, and cautious nature of Chinese culture (the turtle) and the fast-moving, aggressive, predatorial and growth-oriented nature of American culture (the wolf). The discourse du jour of colonialism and anticolonialism proves no better, providing an inadequate means of analysis in that it only allows for the comparison of colonizer and colonized. Herein, we take a different tack and consider the previously unnamed and not fully recognized omnipredatorial impulse of American culture—that which drives American educational, media, and corporate organizations to expand and consume without restriction or regard for ethnicity, national background, heritage, or practicality. It is this organic, instinctive, and subconscious impulse that causes American institutions to strive for a unification of all cultures under a single banner that absorbs all that is useful from other peoples, discards all the rest, and effectively Americanizes everything and everyone with which it interacts. The Chinese have no comparable impulse at the global scale, being content to engage in commerce with a focus on practical, regional geopolitics. But they are intensively protective of their culture and civilization, which stands to frustrate the American instinct and complicate interaction between the nations. How these competing and conflicting behavioural patterns developed and how they function in the classroom are matters worthy of discussion and consideration. By developing and expanding upon the concept of the omnipredatorial impulse, contrasting it to China’s unexpansive culture, and assessing their respective influence on American and Chinese educational mindsets, this research will develop a more effective model of intercultural classroom dynamics.<p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/edu_01/0251/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>
The year 2020 saw a large and rapid COVID-related transition to distance learning, including in countries and institutions that have traditionally been averse to non-traditional instruction delivery options. The effects of this shift have been evaluated in numerous papers; however, most have addressed changes in the educational operation and mindset of students in the developed world. This article examines the self-reported performance and satisfaction of two cohorts of college students in China, the first (Cohort I) recruited from two of the researcher’s courses—Educational Research and Issues in Bicultural Education—both taught at Jilin International Studies University, and consisting of a total of 105 participants out of a possible 137 (76.64% response rate). The second cohort (Cohort II) consisted of 28 participants from higher educational institutions throughout China, collected by way of the snowball sampling method with the assistance of one of the researcher’s students. Participants were given a multi-construct electronic survey of 30 questions. They then submitted these completed surveys as DOCX files by email or by the Tencent WeChat messenger program. These results were compiled and analyzed in Microsoft Excel, using simple statistical methods and percentages. Results for each cohort differed markedly, with considerable overlap of key constructs. Students in Cohort I demonstrated considerably higher levels of satisfaction with distance education and their physically isolated living and study conditions than did those in Cohort II; however, both groups reported generally positive or neutral experiences in distance learning both in absolute terms and relative to their in-person learning experiences. Possible reasons for the differences in these responses and the suggestions for expanding and improving distance learning in China are presented herein.<p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/edu_01/0944/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>
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