Immigrant students and global education

Research on immigrant students in higher education often articulates a deficit narrative emphasizing the challenges immigrant students face in comparison to their native-born peers. In education for global competence, however, immigrant students’ life experiences give them a potential advantage. This study investigated whether project-based learning designed to take advantage of immigrant students’ intercultural life experiences could contribute to the development of global competence among undergraduate students. Developing and teaching a collaborative, project-based course where undergraduate students researched the intercultural experiences of their immigrant peers, researchers measured specific learning outcomes using quantitative and thematic analysis of student research papers and reflective essays. The study concluded that project-based assignments designed to take advantage of immigrant students’ intercultural experiences could yield significant contributions to the global education of immigrant and non-immigrant students alike.

Voicing Rivers

Welcome to this Special Issue of River Research and Applications, entitled Voicing Rivers. As an editorial group, it has been a great privilege to read and consider responses to our call for contributions and share with readers, authors and reviewers involved in this journey. We invited proposals for articles and creative work to focus on stories of, by, from and for rivers, from a variety of perspectives. This Special Issue has been a collaborative project involving nearly 20 rivers and over 50 people. We thank contributors, reviewers and the River Research and Applications journal editorial and production team.

Virtual Reality (VR) Multi-User Lab for Immersive Teaching

As VR technology matures, it offers opportunities to provide state of the art learning experiences. The use of this technology in education is not new, however, it can be significantly improved. Situated (or contextual) learning is one of the key pillars of immersive learning. Multi-user interaction in virtual environments has always been one of the goals of VR and this has been represented by the tools developed for it. In this preliminary work, we aim to introduce Project Mobius, which is a collaborative project between Edify.ac and the University of Glasgow. We describe how our multi-user lab has been set up and potential future applications for teaching and learning.

Youth-Led Action Research

In this chapter, the authors provide a case study and autoethnographic account of a youth-led, social justice-oriented, community-based participatory action research (CBPAR) project in Washington, DC. After providing background of action research, university-community partnerships, and the context of the partnership, the authors describe the three phases of the collaborative project that took place from Fall 2019 to Spring 2021. During this time, in the midst of a global pandemic, high school and college students, with support from teachers, implemented a mixed methods CBPAR project on making Black Lives Matter in schools. This chapter describes the steps taken and the lessons learned, with the intent of assisting the reader in potentially implementing something similar in their community or at their university.

Migrant doctors’ narratives about patients

Narratives of personal and vicarious experience are part and parcel of being a doctor, as doctors routinely (re)interpret and (re)tell patients’ narratives when reflecting on clinical cases. Taking an interest in migrant doctors’ self-initiated narratives about patients in doctor-researcher interviews about cultural transitions, this study examines over thirty hours of audio-recordings of forty semi-structured interviews conducted as part of a collaborative project in Chile and Hong Kong. The study explores how migrant doctors construct their professional ‘self’ through narratives about patients, and how these narratives help migrant doctors legitimise their arguments and professional stance in criticizing cultural and societal attitudes towards health and illness, and the professional practices of local doctors. Finally, the paper reflects on the ways in which migrant doctors’ identity positionings provide space for the creation of a “symbolic territory” in which the practices of migrant doctors co-exist within the boundaries of the practices of local doctors in the host culture.

Developing Culturally Competent Technology for Older Adults in Japan and the United States

The United States and Japan are experiencing an exponential growth in the number of persons age 65 and older. To address certain aging-related issues, assistive technological advancements are being developed. These technologies need to be reliable, safe, secure, and culturally accepted by older adults. In addition, technology must be developed within the unique cultural contexts of each country. One approach currently being used is an interdisciplinary team approach comprised of researchers representing gerontology, information systems, robotics, health sciences, sociology, and computer sciences between two universities in the United States and two Japanese universities. This collaborative project between institutions and countries highlights the need to understand the cultures and traditions of each of these countries. To further develop culturally competent technology, an integrative research plan is being utilized, which incorporates the use of community engagement to examine the influence of the cultural context among older adults.

Tunirrusiangit: Their Gifts

Tunnirusiangit: Kenojuak Ashevak + Timotee Pitsiulak was a collaborative project in 2017-2018, led by four Inuit artists and curators, Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory, Koomuatuk (Kuzy) Curley, Taqralik Partridge, Jocelyn Piirainen, in partnership with Dr. Anna Hudson (Mobilizing Inuit Cultural Heritage (MICH) at York University) and Georgiana Uhlyarik, Curator, Art Gallery of Ontario. Designed to generate exchange between Inuit and non-Inuit about the role of art, beauty, and culture in shaping our relationships to the land and to each other, it celebrated the achievements of Kenojuak Ashevak and Timotee Pitsiulak, two Inuit artists who challenged the parameters of tradition while consistently articulated a compelling vision of the Inuit worldview. The team reflected on the project in a series of conversations in October 2020. This is an edited version of their discussions.

Voicing Rivers: Editorial

Welcome to this Special Issue, entitled Voicing Rivers. As an editorial group (Figure 1), it has been a great privilege to read and consider responses to our call for contributions and share with readers, authors and reviewers involved in this journey. We invited proposals for articles and creative work to focus on stories of, by, from and for rivers, from a variety of perspectives. This Special Issue has been a collaborative project involving nearly 20 rivers and over 50 people. We thank contributors, reviewers and the River Research and Applications journal editor and staff.

The reflective research diary: a tool for more ethical and engaged disaster research

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to highlight how keeping a reflective research journal can help disaster researchers to work in a more ethical and engaged way.Design/methodology/approachThe author analyses the reflective research diary to illustrate how keeping it has helped the author, a white, non-Indigenous researcher, navigate British academia whilst trying to plan a collaborative project with Indigenous peoples during the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic.FindingsThe author draws out some of the ways that academic institutions can undermine ethical research practice through opaque structures and by incentivising pressuring early-career researchers (ECRs) to conduct fieldwork in dangerous times. The author demonstrates ways the rpeers and author have tried to push against these structures, noting that this is not always possible and that their efforts are always limited without institutional support or change.Originality/valueMany ECRs and PhD students have written reflective accounts about the ethical challenges they have faced during fieldwork. In this article, the author adds to this by building on literature in disaster studies and positing how ethical and engaged research can be conducted within British (colonial) institutions.