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This reflective paper shares the experiences of a higher education professional living and working abroad and the long-term impacts of those experiences on their self-authorship journey through reflection ten years later. The story of this reflection focuses on how cultural differences and community ties helped to facilitate growth and self-confidence through navigating the challenges and complexities of living abroad in a culture with differing conventions. The paper concludes by sharing how reflecting on self-authorship during and after international experiences can help develop personal identities both as an individual and within a collective.

This paper is based on the ethnographic multiple case study of four refugee background youths from Burma at four different schools in a midwestern urban school district in the US. My research finds that the normalization of English constructed the focal youths' language-related identities. I also argue that through this normalization, language difference between school and home became a difference that marginalized the focal youth in their class and racialized their subjectivity.

International students leave their countries to pursue their educational goals in a different country and must adapt to succeed. However, they may face challenges when adapting to and learning a new culture. This study investigates the challenges common to international students in their host countries and summarizes the publishing trends. A literature search of peer-reviewed articles published in Scopus, Taylor & Francis, EBSCO Host, Web of Science, Springer, PubMed, and Wiley Online over 21 years (2002-2022) was done for data collection. After the screening, a total of 175 articles were included in this review and analyzed with content analysis. The findings show that the top four destinations for international students (USA, UK, Australia, and Canada) produced the most articles about international students' challenges. Additionally, most papers investigated more than one challenge, and sociocultural (82.9%) and academic challenges (82.3%) were the most researched, with language issues as the primary cause. The results also show no changes or improvement in the challenges of international students in 21 years, and areas such as psychological and economic challenges need more research. These challenges and other trends found in the articles are discussed and directions for future research are suggested.

Research on education in Canada, the United States, the Philippines, and Ireland suggests that bilingual education of a pluralist character neither depresses nor enhances performance in English or in non-language subjects. Decisions to promote bilingual education are often based on social demands. (f=fiche numbers). (CP)

In a national survey, 82% of U.S. neuropsychologists who offered services to Hispanics self-reported inadequate preparation to work with this population (Echemendia, Harris, Congett, Diaz, & Puente, 1997). The purpose of this paper is to improve the quality and accessibility of neuropsychological services for Hispanic people living in the United States by giving guidance for service delivery, training, and organizational policy. General guidance towards this end comes from professional ethics for psychologists and interpreters/translators, federal civil rights law, the International Test Commission, and the Office of Minority Health of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, among others. This guidance is specifically applied here to cover professional cultural and linguistic competence of neuropsychologists, psychometrists, interpreters, translators, and consultants; languages of evaluation; use of interpreters; evaluation of acculturation; test translation, adaptation, and interpretation; application of test norms; intervention issues; reimbursement; and organizational issues. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Throughout history the United States has been constantly confronted with the responsibility of integrating diverse groups of people into its society. This paper uses current and historical ideas about the complex nature of indigenous groups, globalization, and education as vehicles for promoting the adoption of cosmopolitanism, a paradigm that values inclusion, tolerance, and respect for the other. Cosmopolitanism is discussed as a plausible alternative to historical assimilationist/nativist practices. The paper uses the Otavalos, an indigenous population in Ecuador, as an instructive example of a community that successfully applies a cosmopolitan approach to its indigenous identity and immigration behaviors to integrate itself into a modern global society.

This review aims to address the major sources of stress experienced by international students, the role of individual differences, the chronology of their stress levels and wellbeing over time, and gaps in the existing literature. Two electronic databases (PubMed and Psych Info) were searched for English peer-reviewed articles using eight search terms. Thirty-eight studies were included in this paper and divided into themes and sub-themes including sources of stress, individual differences and mental health including stress, depression and wellbeing. The findings highlight major stressors and show mixed results in some areas due to the lack of homogenous samples based on country of origin or ethnicity and sometimes context differences concerning the country or university social dynamics. Limitations were identified in the methodology, and several recommendations for future research are included.

This paper examines the experiences of Chinese international students from East Coast University (a pseudonym) in the United States through their participation in a Chinese ethnic-based Christian church (CCC). Employing ethnographic-based fieldwork, the study highlights how Chinese international students see their experiences in CCC as a source of acculturation to U.S. society. However, the students evidence little understanding of the reality that they are in fact being acculturated to a subculture within U.S. society that at times embraces values contradictory to those of progressive-oriented East Coast University.

Civil war in Syria has resulted in the largest refugee group and the newest wave of refugees resettling in countries worldwide. Although they have experienced war, migration, and great trauma, resettlement introduces a new set of obstacles including cultural adjustment, language learning, and the development of a new social network. This paper is a qualitative analysis of the acculturation, mental health, and academic experience of Syrian refugee adolescents in the United States. The study is unique in its use of an ecological framework to organize emerging themes, and integrates responses from parents and adolescents to provide a comprehensive understanding of this experience. Moreover, the researchers focus on an important setting for support and intervention: the school system. Implications and recommendations for assessment, intervention, and programming are provided.

Early assimilation theorists predicted the eventual loss of ethnic distinctiveness for immigrants in the United States. In this paper, the author not only questions the possibilities that Latino and Latina Americans have for losing their ethnic distinctiveness, but also proposes that these possibilities vary widely within the Hispanic population. The central question posed in this paper is: In addition to traditional predictors of assimilation, do experiences of discrimination also affect ethnic identification patterns for Hispanics? Based on the analysis of two data sets, the 1989 Latino National Political Survey and the 2002 National Survey of Latinos, the author provides evidence that Latino/a Americans who have experienced discrimination are less likely to self-identify as "Americans," and more likely to self-identify with pan-ethnic or hyphenated American labels. The author contends that this is because experiences of discrimination teach some Latinos and Latinas that other citizens of the United States do not view them as "unhyphenated Americans." The author further proposes that, through a process of racialized assimilation, these Latin American immigrants and their children are becoming Latino and Latina Americans. (Contains 7 tables and 4 notes.)

The growing prevalence of cardiovascular diseases in the United States (US) has disproportionately affected minority populations more than their white counterparts. A population that is often overlooked is the Asian American population, particularly Southeastern Asian immigrants. Despite having relatively favorable socioeconomic indicators compared to the general US population, Asian Americans, specifically Southeast Asian individuals, face a significant burden of traditional cardiovascular risk factors and are considered a high cardiovascular disease risk group. In addition, most studies have aggregated Asian populations into one major racial group rather than analyzing the different ethnicities among the Asian categorization. While some studies suggest that the acculturation process has some degree of impact on cardiovascular health, there has not been a widely-used tool to measure or ascertain the totality of acculturation. Instead, multiple proxies have been used to measure acculturation, and prior studies have argued for more culturally-tailored acculturation proxies. This paper aims to assess the implications of different acculturation measures on cardiovascular health among Asian Americans, particularly Southeastern Asian immigrants. The following proxies were expanded on in this paper: English spoken at home, length of stay in the US, religiosity and spirituality, and admixed family structures. Previous studies showed that as the length of stay in the US increases, the burden of cardiovascular risk factors increases. However, the impact of English spoken at home, religiosity, and admixed family structure are still inconclusive given the extent of current studies. While most studies suggest that an increase in acculturation increases the risk of cardiovascular disease, it is critical to note that acculturation is a multifaceted process. Therefore, more studies are necessary to appropriately examine the implications of various acculturation processes on cardiovascular risk factors in Asians, specifically Southeastern Asian individuals in the US. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how two sites of adult learning in the food movement create educational alternatives to the dominant U.S. food system. It further examines how these pedagogies challenge racialised, classed and gendered ideologies and practices in their aims, curricular content, and publically documented educational processes. The first case is Growing Power, an urban farm which embraces small scale capitalism and vocational education as an end toward community food security, social and ecological justice, and anti-racist education. The second case, Tsyunhehkw[superscript caret], is the "integrated community food system" of the Oneida Nation in rural Wisconsin, centred on cultural decolonisation through the growing and eating of traditional Oneida foods. In both these projects, there are strong possibilities to teach a critical, social justice alternative to white, middle class norms and practices of food production and consumption.

The study reviews the research from 1969 to 2005 describing pre-service candidates' transition from student teacher to professional educator during their socialisation into school culture. Despite the educational reforms in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia over the last three decades, this review argues that new teachers experience many of the same initial concerns that have been documented about beginning teachers for over 35 years. The paper also examines the core themes that emerged in each of the respective periods identified in the review, including: teachers' perceptions of self (1969 to mid 1980s); professional sustainability (mid 1980s to late 1990s); and emerging identity during the process of their socialisation into school culture (2000 to 2005). Based on this examination, the paper suggests that the tension between new teacher identity formation and socialisation into school culture can be reconciled by a post-industrial perspective of how individuals formulate concepts of self.

International doctors ("international medical graduates" or "IMGs") constitute 23% of the physician workforce in the United States. Despite entry screening for educational credentials and spoken English proficiency, research shows that language and cultural issues can still persist for IMGs during and after their residency training. This paper describes the process of our university language center in developing ESP courses to meet the needs of IMGs with respect to acculturation, the language and culture of the patient community, the language of the hospital, and intelligibility in performing key medical texts. These courses are seen as useful in addressing the socialization needs of IMGs as they enter the U.S. system and attempt to acquire the secondary Discourse (Gee, 1990) of physician practicing in the U.S. health care context. The paper concludes with a discussion of the utility of ESP work in medical discourse and sets a research agenda for further work in the communicative setting and tasks of IMGs.

Given the receptivity of American colleges to international students, administrators and professors must recognize the diversity such registrants bring to campus in the form of achievement, age, gender, language, and national differences. The purpose of this study was to compare learning style preferences of international first year college students and to analyze the effects of accommodating learning-style preferences of first year international college students on achievement and anxiety levels over one semester. This paper focused on the identification of learning style profiles of first time visiting Japanese, Korean, and Chinese college student populations. It also assessed the anxiety and acculturation levels of these international students when they were first introduced to the American educational system which incorporated teacher facilitation and promoted student directed studies. Finally, student learning styles were assessed after a six-week summer session to see if learning styles remained the same after students were introduced to the American educational system. After the six-week summer session and two semesters, a focus group meeting with a sample population of students and a separate focus group meeting with instructors were held to confirm quantitative findings.

The purpose of this paper was to review extant literature on multicultural education in the context of teaching physical education. More specifically, the article was designed to review the literature on physical education teachers' knowledge and skills related to teaching culturally diverse students. The findings revealed teachers' knowledge and skills in multicultural education to embrace cultural competency, cultural sensitivity, culturally responsive pedagogy, and racial identity, and indicated multicultural education coursework and field experiences in teacher education programs to be important avenues for the development of positive attitudes toward cultural diversity. Other findings from this review point to limited previous research studies that focused on multiculturalism in physical education, and further that physical education teachers have varying degrees of knowledge and understanding of multicultural education. The outcomes of these studies underscore the important role physical education teacher education has in preparing pre-service teachers for diversity in schools. (Contains 1 table and 1 figure.)

This paper explores supervisor development in the light of information generated by the Erasmus-funded project on the modern doctorate. It is structured in four phases. Firstly examining interview data to isolate some distinguishing features of the modern doctorate. Secondly re-examining that data to see if these distinguishing features can be mapped on to an existing framework of approaches to research supervision. Thirdly looking at the survey responses relating to that same framework. Fourthly, having found coherence with the five approaches, the initial outcomes from a Norwegian project are examined. The project worked with experienced academics nominated to 'support and develop their colleague supervisors' primarily by designing and leading supervisor development programmes. The findings show that the original framework is also appropriate for supervisors of the modern doctorate and that there are some important organisational factors that need to be taken into account when developing the developers of supervisors.

Cultural characteristics impact on parents' attitudes and perceptions toward children with disabilities. Therefore the unique family background could create a challenge for service providers. Professional who works with children with disabilities need information from families in order to provide effective intervention (Parette, Summer 2004). The purpose of this paper is to review the perception and challenges Chinese-American families of children with disabilities encounter. Specific emphasis was placed on the influence of acculturation of Chinese-American and the intervention of professionals in educational decision making process.

For a century Catholic schools have formed the basis for a strong system of acculturation into Catholic identity and values. Catholic schools provided a low-cost basic education and served as a common school for all social classes of Catholics. This system has weakened considerably in the last decades. Between 1970 and 2000 there was a net loss of 3,595 Catholic schools in the United States, a 29.9% decline. In addition, the nature of these schools seems to be changing as the percentage of total Catholic school enrollment made up by non-Catholics has increased ten-fold in 30 years. Many Catholic Schools seem to have pursued increased academic excellence at the expense of religious acculturation. This paper examines diocesan data to determine the extent to which Catholics still consider Catholic elementary schools to be important. Findings include survey data on school importance from 55,000 diocesan Catholics. In addition, parishioner survey results are presented from two suburban parishes, each of which is considering establishing a parochial elementary school. If new elementary schools are going to be established, a way must be found for Catholics to arrive at a consensus on this issue. (Contains 8 tables and 6 notes.) [Reprinted with permission from the "Review of Religious Research," v47 n2 p175-189 Dec 2005.]

Today, language-minority students comprise one of the fastest-growing segments of the total student population in America, a culturally and linguistically diverse group. A large number of bilingual students fall into the at-risk category because their cultural and linguistic backgrounds put them at a disadvantage in the American educational system and place them in a position in which school, second-language learning, academic achievement, and cross-cultural adjustment could be difficult. In this article, the author discusses the findings of a research involving at-risk students with those who are dealing with these kinds of students on a daily basis to help them understand why at-risk students are not learning at greater speeds. The author further provides that knowing the characteristics of at-risk students can help teachers identify the factors in their academic success or lack of success.

This paper considers how multilingualism is approached in both Japan and the United States by considering the position and roles of the government, schools, and public. There exists the perception in countries where monolingualism is considered the norm that bilingualism, and certainly multilingualism, are problematic. Multilingualism in a monolingual country is frequently seen as a threat to the established monolingual and monocultural way of life. While Japan and the United States are typical of monolinguistically-dominated societies, and some similar attitudes prevail in both countries, their approaches to dealing with multilingualism are vastly different. In Japan and the United States, there are prevailing attitudes that for speakers of the dominant languages--Japanese and English respectively--there is no need to learn another language, and that all others living in the countries should learn to speak the primary language. Yet both countries are far more linguistically diverse than the typical lay person or government official in either country realizes. This is a more recent phenomenon in Japan, but in America, significant multilingualism goes back to the founding of the first colonies. Multilingualism has been unavoidable in a country comprised of immigrants from across the world. It is concluded that in both countries multilingualism is not a threat, but that narrow-mindedness and the failure to look beyond ones own borders are far greater problems. (Contains 17 references.) (KFT)

This essay highlights a range of questions that arise when white suburban students engage urban neighborhoods of poverty and color in the United States. How can involvement in an "other" context move beyond "educational tourism"? The essay presents a pedagogical style that raises questions of the kind of socialized body one inhabits: either one shaped by presumptions of control and rights of academic observation, or one mobilized to risk involvement in a differently communalized episteme. And while the pedagogy described may not be replicable by faculty who do not share the author's background or cross-cultural orientation, the rhetorical style of the essay itself enacts the tensions that this pedagogy contends with: the efforts of a white male educator--altered by decades of inner city involvement--to open "white" space in the classroom to other norms of embodiment and other modes of learning. Here is the necessity and impossibility of moving beyond "educational tourism." (Contains 14 footnotes.)

In the current period of international migration there is no consensus among analysts regarding the relationship between immigrant transnationalism and civic engagement in the United States. Focusing mainly on the transnational behaviors of Latin American migrants, three views predominate: critics argue that immigrant transnationalism hinders integration, advocates argue that the two are not mutually exclusive, while the skeptics simply contend that transnationalism is the exception rather than the norm among these immigrants. Using data from the Latino National Survey (Fraga 2006), the most comprehensive survey of Latino political attitudes and behaviors in the United States to date, we test models of immigrant transnationalism and engagement in U.S. politics and society to determine which immigrant characteristics are associated with a range of transnational practices and attachments as well as measures of U.S. civic participation. We find that transnational behaviors take on different forms as immigrant settlement occurs and that pessimistic accounts of the negative effects of transnationalism on engagement in the civic life of the United States have been overstated. While transnational attachments persist among those with familial or material ties to the home country, our findings suggest that the barriers to immigrant participation and incorporation in the United States have as much to do with the political predispositions of migrants as with how the host state and society receives them. (Contains 3 tables.)

The current paper explores the salience and impact of ethnic and national identities for immigrants that are negotiating more than two cultures. Specifically, we were interested in the ways in which Jewish immigrant adolescents from the former Soviet Union integrate their Russian, Jewish, and American identities, and to what extent identification with these three cultures predicts adaptation to varied life domains. In order to examine whether being Jewish has an impact on salience and predictive value of Russian and American identities, a sample of Jewish adolescents (n = 100) was compared with a sample of non-Jewish (n = 113) adolescent immigrants from the former Soviet Union. The study suggests that Jewish and non-Jewish adolescent immigrants differ in levels of Russian and American identity. Further, using structural equation modeling a bicultural model for Jewish and non-Jewish adolescents was tested. The results suggest that these two groups do not differ with respect to how Russian and American identities impact on adjustment. However, adding Jewish identity to the model for the Jewish sample significantly improved model fit, and rendered some of the impact of Russian identity non-significant. Thus a multicultural model that included all three identities had better explanatory power for this sample than a bicultural one. Implications for the study of ethnic identity of immigrants, particularly those whose lives involve multiple cultural affiliations, are drawn. (Contains 4 figures, 1 table and 2 notes.)

In this article, the author offers his responses to the commentaries made by Arlie Woodrum (2009), Susan Faircloth (2009), David Greenwood (2009), and Ursula Kelly (2009) on his book "Learning to Leave," as well as his article, "Rural Schooling in Mobile Modernity: Returning to the Places I've Been." Each of the commentators speaks to questions of educational equity. While the large conversation around equity has been in motion for some decades now, the author asserts that there is considerable evidence that schools continue to reinforce and contribute to multiple forms of social inequity much as they always have. The author concludes by suggesting that one might take heed of Ulrich Beck and Arjun Appadurai's sense of the cosmopolitan in rural education. By cosmopolitanism means that while one lives physically in some place, it is still possible to achieve many forms of connection to other places and spaces in addition to (rather than instead of) more strictly local connections.

This essay examines education as a critical link to minority integration--one often lost in the debate over immigration on both sides of the Atlantic. It suggests that western European countries, in looking to the experience of the United States, should place the specific policies and practices in their historical context and sift through the underlying scholarly and political debates to best inform their judgment. It addresses two massive waves of immigration that have had a profound effect on American identity and schooling: the migration of southern and eastern Europeans in the early twentieth century, and the recent and continuing influx of immigrants from Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia, and Africa. It particularly focuses on the problems that arise from transnational life styles, the potential dangers of segmented assimilation, and the arguable benefits of selective acculturation in easing the way toward full social and political participation.

Growing criticism of existing educational leadership preparation programs seems to focus on a lack of contextual relevancy and instructional leadership. Universities and school districts need to develop more formal, collaborative, long-term relationships focused on the nature of principal preparation, moving beyond acculturation to district norms and irrelevancy to building future leaders' capacity for continuous educational improvement. Educational administration as an applied field demands that we answer key questions regarding the development of effective practitioners.

Purpose: To study associations between language acculturation level and changes in cigarette consumption among the diverse and growing U.S.-based Hispanic/Latino population and inform culturally tailored smoking prevention and cessation strategies., Methods: In the Hispanic Community Health Survey/Study of Latinos cohort, we used cigarette consumption behaviors at baseline (2008-2011) and follow-up (2014-2017) and a modified Short Acculturation Scale for Hispanics (SASH) language subscale to measure associations of language acculturation (unidimensional) with changes in cigarette consumption and quitting rates. Weighted multivariable linear and logistic regressions were stratified by daily (n = 1397) and nondaily (n = 633) smoking, and either sex, educational attainment, or migration status., Results: Smokers at baseline (n = 2030) on average were aged 42 years old (SE = 0.5) with a mean SASH-language score of 2.3 (SE = 0.1; range = 1-5), indicating more Spanish language use. Among male daily smokers, we observed increases in smoked cigarettes-per-day (CPD) with unit increases in SASH-language score (1.08, 95% CI: 0.24-1.92). Associations with acculturation trended toward greater increases in CPD and lower odds of quitting as educational attainment increased., Conclusions: Language acculturation level is an important determinant for increased smoking behaviors, particularly among men. Our findings are significant in informing smoking reduction programs for the Hispanic/Latino population., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2023. Published by Elsevier Inc.)

In "The English Only Restaurant," Martinez Palau presents a number of Latino characters who, seduced by the economic promises of assimilation, attempt to suppress their linguistic and cultural identities in order to run a business the "American way." As befits a sociopolitical satire, the play on the one hand consciously ridicules the characters and their actions for the subservient conformity they represent, and on the other hand balances this critical vision with an implicit appeal to a more liberal norm by which these characters and behaviors can be judged: the United States has always been a multilingual society, and minority languages should have a rightful place alongside the language of the dominant majority group. Along with asserting this multilingual norm and establishing it as a frame, Martinez Palau addresses the social, economical, and political implications of minority language restrictions. The socioeconomic and political assumptions of his treatment of the language issue reveal a sociolinguistic "orientation," a "complex of dispositions toward language and its role, and toward languages and their role in society". This language-as-problem orientation organizes the message of the play and is the subject of this essay. (Contains 8 notes.)

This paper presents the results of exploratory research with a group of seven Korean expatriate women. The study employed a modified Reality Therapy approach over eight meetings conducted by two professionally qualified leaders who also speak Korean. Qualitative research methods were used to analyze and describe the participants' experiences. Results indicate that members commonly experienced stress from language barriers, cultural adaptation, homesickness, financial difficulties, disrupted family relationships, and lowered self-esteem. Through candid discussions and identification of coping methods, the group experienced increased self-esteem, improved well-being, and group cohesiveness. Progress was found to be sustained after 12 weeks.

In this article, I argue that the enacted curriculum in the United States of America is driven by a politics of domestication--a negative process of acculturation by which individuals are required to conform uncritically to established norms in a community of practice, and by which they are prevented from using their own craft and/or professional knowledge to assist the community to grow. As a result, the science curriculum, instead of being a site for critical engagement, becomes more like a pasture--a site for the uncritical grazing of the "official knowledge". Suggestions are provided to address this pervasive issue and to explore more effective ways to develop curriculum that enables teachers to teach for diversity and understanding.

Updating the 1920s notion of Anthropophagy developed to symbolize through cannibalistic ritual the process of cultural assimilation that influences art, this article examines issues of naming, describing, and representing contemporary Brazilian art. In the first part of the article, the work of four contemporary Brazilian artists recently exhibited in the United States frames criticism to the common practice of labeling contemporary artworks according to national identity. In the article's second section, Brazil's multifaceted cultural and artistic context will be used to outline implications for art education and institutional practices more attuned to the transnational dimensions of art. In conclusion, hybridity becomes a twofold framework. It describes, as Anthropophagy did before, cultural layering, negotiations, and disputes. It also articulates a political position more fitting to capture and interpret the art produced in our global age, not only in Brazil. (Contains 4 figures.)

The Hmong in the U.S., a refugee population from Southeast Asia, brought a rich culture with them. To maximize therapeutic success with Hmong clients, counselors must acknowledge and understand Hmong history, culture, and acculturation and the value placed on family and community. This article provides background information and suggestions for counselors working with Hmong clients.

In this paper, the author argues that current notions of citizenship do not fully reflect the reality of increasing transnational migration and diversity within the United States. Under the rhetoric of national unity and security, transnational migrants are often treated as foreigners, outsiders, or even in some cases positioned on the opposite side of "good" and "desirable" citizens of the U.S. society. Due to governmental and civic attempts to build a unified national identity, transnational migrant students' issues of belonging have become ever more problematic. The author suggests the necessity of reexamining current notions of citizenship to reflect the diversity of transnational migrants in the United States and their social, economical, and cultural contexts of identity formation. The importance of discussing the notions of citizenship in relation to identity politics and its implications for and applications to education of transnational adolescent immigrants are discussed.

Historically, the American system of higher education has been a patchwork of denominational colleges (along with public institutions), however, the more recent histories of several institutions of higher education seem to have a common theme: the jettisoning of a distinctive identity grounded in a particular worldview in order to create an institution with a smorgasbord of options. A homogeneity of neutrality--or professed neutrality--pervades American education. Education schools and departments, in particular, suffer from external pressures to conform, because of the frequency and strength of outside review. They need to dance to the tune of the state and the professional accrediting agencies, from NCATE (National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education) to the advisory groups in specific academic disciplines. Anyone who has worked in the education department of a college or university is aware of the centralizing and neutralizing effect of state mandates, accrediting agencies, textbook publishers, and foundations and other funding institutions. These external pressures, and the internalization of them, frequently marginalize individuals with convictions or interests that lie outside the mainstream. The author, whose personal background and professional interest are in faith-based schools, illustrates these points with some stories from his own experience, and argues that while it is important that everyone has an "intellectual home" that is safe, it is also true that we live in a pluralistic, profoundly interconnected world, and must learn to deal with differences. (Contains 1 footnote.)