Introduction to American Studies (original) (raw)
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Post-secondary education in America is no longer a unilateral affair. Crosscultural competence is extremely crucial in today's world, and American students in particular have fallen short in the past. As H. Stephen Straight lamented back in the late 1990's, "Even students with advanced proficiency seldom develop bilingual skills and intercultural knowledge sufficient to meet their professional career needs by the time they graduate. As a result, the United States chronically lacks the multilingual language proficiency it needs to function effectively across cultural boundaries" (ERIC Digest, 1998). This paper's aims are threefold: 1) to present the rationale for cross-cultural education, 2) to illuminate the implementation of multi-faceted interdisciplinary content into foreign language studies, and subsequently to encourage those who do not teach foreign languages to integrate cross-cultural perspectives into their own curricula, and finally, 3) to suggest that cross-cultural studies and foreign language study are not mutually exclusive: they are inextricably linked. In so doing, the paper will highlight the internationalization efforts at Elon University, a small college in Elon, North Carolina, as well as the work that foreign language professors in particular are doing at Elon in order to foster the ever-evolving global atmosphere on campus.
Integrative Learning: Mapping the Terrain: The Academy in Transition
Globalizing Knowledge: Connecting International and Intercultural Studies by Grant H. Cornwell and Eve W. Stoddard General Education in an Age of Student Mobility: An Invitation to Discuss Systemic Curricular Planning Essays by Robert Shoenberg and others College-Level Learning in High School: Purposes, Practices, and Practical * Campuses participating in the integrative learning project include two community colleges (College of San Mateo in California and LaGuardia Community College in New York); three baccalaureate institutions (Carleton College in Minnesota, the
Globalizing knowledge : connecting international & intercultural studies
1999
This is the fourth in a series of occasional papers that analyze the changes taking place in U.S. undergraduate education. This essay examines two streams of reform on the campus and in the curriculum-internationalization and diversification-and suggests that these separate movements must come together in a new paradigm of higher education in which diversity would be taught as the historical result of multiple overlapping diasporas created by the evolving process of globalization. Concomitantly, an understanding of deeply different cultural and political perspectives from outside the United States would develop the intercultural skills students will need in an increasingly diverse and globally interdependent nation. Part 1 of the paper, "Separate Streams: The Legacy of American Exceptionalism," focuses on the internationalization of U.S. higher education, diversity, reconceptualizing identities and locations, globalization, diasporas, interculturalism, and positionality (identity politics). Part 2, "Educational Goals for U.S. Students in the Twenty-first Century," offers four interrelated goals that follow from the changes identified in part 1: understanding diverse cultures; developing intercultural skills; understanding global processes; and preparing for local and global citizenship. (Contains 56 references and 6 endnotes.) (CH) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document.
Globalizing Knowlege: Connecting International & Intercultural Studies
o u t this Se 0 T HIS SERIES OF OCCASIONAL PAPERS REFLECTS THE CONVICTION of AAC&U that, as the name states, we are witnessing The Academy in Transition. Change presents difficulties and opportunities for both individuals and institutions. For some, confusion, frustration, and fear cloud efforts to understand and gain control over events. For others, change is energizing, presenting opportunities, and calling forth creative responses. Still others find competing calls for change-conflicting agendas advocated by different individuals and organizations and uncertainty about the results of alternative courses of action-reason for continuing with practices that have worked in the past. The purposes of this series are to analyze changes taking place in key areas of undergraduate education and to provide "road maps" about the directions and destinations of the changing academy. Although we may still be on an uncertain journey, having a map increases the chances that we get to where we want to go, and it reduces the ambiguity.
Globalizing Knowledge: Connecting International & Intercultural Studies. The Academy in Transition
1999
This is the fourth in a series of occasional papers that analyze the changes taking place in U.S. undergraduate education. This essay examines two streams of reform on the campus and in the curriculum-internationalization and diversification-and suggests that these separate movements must come together in a new paradigm of higher education in which diversity would be taught as the historical result of multiple overlapping diasporas created by the evolving process of globalization. Concomitantly, an understanding of deeply different cultural and political perspectives from outside the United States would develop the intercultural skills students will need in an increasingly diverse and globally interdependent nation. Part 1 of the paper, "Separate Streams: The Legacy of American Exceptionalism," focuses on the internationalization of U.S. higher education, diversity, reconceptualizing identities and locations, globalization, diasporas, interculturalism, and positionality (identity politics). Part 2, "Educational Goals for U.S. Students in the Twenty-first Century," offers four interrelated goals that follow from the changes identified in part 1: understanding diverse cultures; developing intercultural skills; understanding global processes; and preparing for local and global citizenship. (Contains 56 references and 6 endnotes.) (CH) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document.