Acculturation and cultural identity of immigrant youth: The impact of courses in the language and culture of origin

Career choices in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) are favoured by men and often avoided by women; on the other hand, women tend to choose fields such as the social sciences. This not only leads to a shortage of employees with STEM degrees, but also reinforces the prejudice that certain (personality) characteristics are ‘typically female’ or ‘typically male’. Career orientation motives of young women and men can have important implications for gender (a-)typical career choices. However, there is little empirical research on the correlates of career orientation motives in young women in the field of STEM. This study seeks to address this gap by outlining the components of career orientation motives and showing relationships among them. Therefore, our results provide insight into the circumstances and conditions that are associated with academic and career choices.

Courses in the language and culture of origin and their impact on youth development in cultural transition: A study among immigrant and dual heritage youth in Switzerland

Elena Makarova traces how the concept of intercultural education in German-speaking European countries promotes the inclusion of courses in the Language and Culture of Origin (LCO) for immigrant youth in the school curriculum of host countries. Such courses are assumed to have positive effects on the development of immigrant youth in the host country. Particularly, it has been suggested that participation in LCO courses increases the self-esteem of immigrant youth, facilitates the development of their bicultural identity and improves their integration in the host society. However, there is a lack of empirical evidence on the nature of the effects of LCO course attendance on the acculturation of immigrant youth and their cultural identity. Accordingly, the aim of the study detailed in the chapter is to examine the impact of immigrant youth’s attitudes towards LCO courses and of their attendance of such courses on their acculturation and cultural identity.

How gender fair are German schoolbooks in the twenty-first century? An analysis of language and illustrations in schoolbooks for mathematics and German

Schoolbooks convey not only school-relevant knowledge; they also influence the development of stereotypes about different social groups. Particularly during the 1970s and 1980s, many studies analysed schoolbooks and criticised the overall predominance of male persons and of traditional role allocations. Since that time, women’s and men’s occupations and social functions have changed considerably. The present research investigated gender portrayals in schoolbooks for German and mathematics that were recently published in Germany. We examined the proportions of female and male persons in pictures and texts and categorized their activities, occupational and parental roles. Going beyond previous studies, we added two criteria: the use of gender-fair language and the spatial arrangements of persons in pictures. Our results show that schoolbooks for German contained almost balanced depictions of girls and boys, whereas women were less frequently shown than men. In mathematics books, males outnumbered females in general. Across both types of books, female and male persons were engaged in many different activities, not only gendertyped ones; however, male persons were more often described via their profession than females. Use of gender-fair language has found its way into schoolbooks but is not used consistently. Books for German were more gender fair in terms of linguistic forms than books for mathematics. For spatial arrangements, we found no indication for gender biases. The results are discussed with a focus on how schoolbooks can be optimized to contribute to gender equality.

Dynamic Languages and Applications. Report on the Workshop Dyla 07 at ECOOP 2007

Following last two years’ workshop on dynamic languages at the ECOOP conference, the Dyla 2007 workshop was a successful and popular event. As its name implies, the workshop’s focus was on dynamic languages and their applications. Topics and discussions at the workshop included macro expansion mechanisms, extension of the method lookup algorithm, language interpretation, reflexivity and languages for mobile ad hoc networks. The main goal of this workshop was to bring together different dynamic language communities and favouring cross communities interaction. Dyla 2007 was organised as a full day meeting, partly devoted to presentation of submitted position papers and partly devoted to tool demonstration. All accepted papers can be downloaded from the workshop’s web site. In this report, we provide an overview of the presentations and a summary of discussions.

Meta-Environment and Executable Meta-Language using Smalltalk: an Experience Report

Object-oriented modelling languages such as EMOF are often used to specify domain specific meta-models. However, these modelling languages lack the ability to describe behavior or operational semantics. Several approaches have used a subset of Java mixed with OCL as executable meta-languages. In this experience report we show how we use Smalltalk as an executable meta-language in the context of the Moose reengineering environment. We present how we implemented EMOF and its behavioral aspects. Over the last decade we validated this approach through incrementally building a meta-described reengineering environment. Such an approach bridges the gap between a code-oriented view and a meta-model driven one. It avoids the creation of yet another language and reuses the infrastructure and run-time of the underlying implementation language. It offers an uniform way of letting developers focus on their tasks while at the same time allowing them to meta-describe their domain model. The advantage of our approach is that developers use the same tools and environment they use for their regular tasks. Still the approach is not Smalltalk specific but can be applied to language offering an introspective API such as Ruby, Python, CLOS, Java and C#.

Language ideologies: the formation and legitimisation of New Zealand English

New Zealand English first emerged at the beginning of the 19th century as a result of the dialect contact of British (51%), Scottish (27.3%) and Irish (22%) migrants (Hay and Gordon 2008:6). This variety has subsequently developed into an autonomous and legitimised national variety and enjoys a distinct socio-political status, recognition and codification. In fact, a number of dictionaries of New Zealand English have been published1 and the variety is routinely used as the official medium on TV, radio and other media. This however, has not always been the case, as for long only British standard norms were deemed suitable for media broadcasting. While there is some work already on lay commentary about New Zealand English (see for example Gordon 1983, 1994; Hundt 1998), there is much more to be done especially concerning more recent periods of the history of this variety and the ideologies underlying its development and legitimisation. Consequently, the current project aims at investigating the metalinguistic discourses during the period of transition from a British norm to a New Zealand norm in the media context, this will be done by focusing on debates about language in light of the advent of radio and television. The main purpose of this investigation is thus to examine the (language) ideologies that have shaped and underlain these discourses (e.g. discussions about the appropriateness of New Zealand English vis à vis external, British models of language) and their related practices in these media (e.g. broadcasting norms). The sociolinguistic and pragmatic effects of these ideologies will also be taken into account. Furthermore, a comparison will be carried out, at a later stage in the project, between New Zealand English and a more problematic and less legitimised variety: Estuary English. Despite plenty of evidence of media and other public discourses on Estuary English, in fact, there has been very little metalinguistic analysis of this evidence, nor examinations of the underlying ideologies in these discourses. The comparison will seek to discover whether similar themes emerge in the ideologies played out in publish discourses about these varieties, themes which serve to legitimise one variety, whilst denying such legitimacy to the other.

Contact, Mobility and Authenticity: Language Ideologies in Koineisation

New Zealand English first emerged at the beginning of the 19th century as a result of the dialect contact of British (51%), Scottish (27.3%) and Irish (22%) migrants (Hay and Gordon 2008:6). This variety has subsequently developed into an autonomous and legitimised national variety and enjoys a distinct socio-political status, recognition and codification. In fact, a number of dictionaries of New Zealand English have been published1 and the variety is routinely used as the official medium on TV, radio and other media. This however, has not always been the case, as for long only British standard norms were deemed suitable for media broadcasting. While there is some work already on lay commentary about New Zealand English (see for example Gordon 1983, 1994; Hundt 1998), there is much more to be done especially concerning more recent periods of the history of this variety and the ideologies underlying its development and legitimisation. Consequently, the current project aims at investigating the metalinguistic discourses during the period of transition from a British norm to a New Zealand norm in the media context, this will be done by focusing on debates about language in light of the advent of radio and television. The main purpose of this investigation is thus to examine the (language) ideologies that have shaped and underlain these discourses (e.g. discussions about the appropriateness of New Zealand English vis à vis external, British models of language) and their related practices in these media (e.g. broadcasting norms). The sociolinguistic and pragmatic effects of these ideologies will also be taken into account. Furthermore, a comparison will be carried out, at a later stage in the project, between New Zealand English and a more problematic and less legitimised variety: Estuary English. Despite plenty of evidence of media and other public discourses on Estuary English, in fact, there has been very little metalinguistic analysis of this evidence, nor examinations of the underlying ideologies in these discourses. The comparison will seek to discover whether similar themes emerge in the ideologies played out in publish discourses about these varieties, themes which serve to legitimise one variety, whilst denying such legitimacy to the other.