Search results

This paper aims to theorize observations as an American professor that schools are a morally formative culture for all students, but international students especially. Formative because schools mold students’ right or wrong behaviors as dictated by the culture. The purpose of the authors’ examination into international students’ experiences is to explore and understand particular struggles that they may encounter while living within a society that adheres to considerably dissimilar beliefs and ways of life.

This study is empirical in nature (case study) as the authors share their experiences and observations while working with international students.

The authors’ extend their voice to this idea that schools become a morally formative culture and create harmony for different societies through teaching multicultural issues and respectful education. This connection begins when teachers feel the calling to produce well-adjusted, respectful and compassionate citizens of the world. In the absence of this, people would not care about others in foreign places. The final argument, the beauty of schools as a morally formative culture is to protect and love our global neighbors. It is the authors’ strong belief that failure to provide a caring culture in educational contexts could be dangerous to our ever-shrinking global existence.

A research limitation may include little quantitative data, but this study utilizes a qualitative, case-study manner of observations of years and years of working with international students.

The practical implications of this original paper are endless: schools are morally formative, especially the international student experience. This manuscript shows that moral development is very much connected while teaching English language learners (ELL).

The authors’ comment on the debates about how students develop a strong moral identity if exposed to multiple cultures. A clear understanding of these issues may serve as the first step for educators to recognize and consider how curriculum and behaviors within a school can impact international students in moral ways during their new cultural experiences. In conclusion, the authors argue that a respectful and multicultural education can contribute to international harmony, as well as develop caring global citizens.

The paper demonstrates that there is much moral development within the international student experience, as these students must navigate both education and culture. Yet little research has examined the moral impact of teaching international students from a professor’s perspective.

Researchers examine the new landscape of higher education, which is changing and evolving in the twenty-first century, as many non-traditional students, especially learners with physical disabilities, are “knocking on the door of higher education” (Harbour and Madaus, 2011, p. 1). Students with physical disabilities must decide how they desire to become engaged (or not) in campus life. This study also provides a theoretical lens of the moral responsibility of the multicultural academic community. Thus, the purpose of this study is to present findings that indicate gaining insight into the isolation, stigma and advocacy of these students’ lived experiences will require openness for inclusive practices to uplift all students with goals of graduation and employment.

This research investigation includes the process of discovery being analyzed and interpreted through participants’ narratives as a rigorous act of coding, imagination and logic to aggregate findings. To elicit the findings most effectively, transcendental phenomenology is the specific qualitative approach chosen for this study.

This study includes critical findings that indicate gaining insight into the isolation, stigma and advocacy of these students’ lived educative experiences. Concerns regarding communication and support are emphasized through the participants in the findings.

A core limitation would be that this study takes places without regard for historical lived experiences.

Implications exist for this new landscape of Higher Education, as we work beyond the gates of higher education for real-change and social progress. We need to learn about others (non-traditional students) while working toward multicultural competence that should be modeled in academic spaces to impart this knowledge to students to impart into broad society. Let us remember the growth that happens when social support exists, because each person has a value and role in society so that we live together and support each other in lessons of self-empowerment

This is an original study about learners with physical disabilities and the moral issues of how to create an inclusive, multicultural environment in higher education.