No abstract

In a recently published, well-received book, What the Best College Teachers Do, author Ken Bain expounds on 15 years of meticulous research into the attributes and techniques of successful college instructors. One of his main conclusions is that the best college teachers employ what he calls metacognition, or thinking about thinking. He explains that students are inspired when taken on deep intellectual forays. Examples of such cerebral expeditions are probing for tacit assumptions, critically examining the socially constructed paradigms that manipulate our realities, and examining the implications of particular lines of thought. In foreign language classes, the teaching of culture provides a medium for the instructor to exploit this pedagogical resource. Yet most culture taught in foreign language classes is so superficial as to not lend itself to critical reflection or significant paradigm shifts. This article discusses how Bain's findings can be utilized to improve cultural instruction and stimulate the raising of consciousness.

No abstract

It is beyond debate that one’s culture plays a significant role in the self-evaluative process.However, each particular culture uses different measurements to determine who will becrowned with respectability and who will not. The wider the gulf between the actual self andthe culturally influenced ought self, the greater the chances are that one will experience a selfconceptdominated by the negative. Deep cultural instruction in both the classroom and incounseling has the potential to assist one in recognizing that his or her self-esteem may be culture-bound. This realization has the potential to assist one in recognizing cultural irrationalityand ameliorating culturally created personal assumptions that do not contribute to a happy andpositive life.

A couple of decades ago, a visiting anthropologist agreed with some U.S. authors that the American intellectual on university campuses is basically dead and his/her demise is reflected in the superficial, boring, and uninspiring content to which students are exposed. More recent evidence indicates that things have not changed very much. In this article, I attempt to provide ways in which the great American teacher can be resurrected through the use of meaningfulness, metacognition, Transformative Education, cultural introspection, cross-cultural exploration, brain research, Invitational Education, and the study of human universals extant in all cultures.