This symposium is designed to focus on family life education programs and activities from around the world.  Each presenter will provide various perspectives and insights as how family life education is being implemented within his or her country. Perspectives will come from the following countries: Saudi Arabia, Ghana, Australia and South Korea.  A concluding presentation will highlight the current impact family life education programming is making globally – beyond just the four highlighted diverse countries. In addition, it will address how political, economic and social realms greatly impact family life educators’ ability to successfully implement FLE programming internationally.

Objectives

Attendees will gain an increase of knowledge of the family life education programming and activities within specific highlighted countries from around the world.Attendees will be better equipped of the social, political and/or economic changes that will likely need to take place in order to strengthen FLE in countries around the globe.Attendees will increase their understanding of the future directions of FLE globally, and more specifically, how communities can be strengthened with an increase FLE programming and offerings.

The immigration phenomenon has significantly transformed the ethnoprofiles of many countries, prompting researchers to pay closer attention to culture as their research samples have diversified. The goals of the paper are to: (1) critically explore how researchers have expanded current views of family theories on ethnic families, with particular focus on Chinese parenting, and (2) to stress the importance of how culture and its context will lead researchers to re-envision the current ways of knowledge formation. Our broad objective is a call to action to encourage innovative and creative ways of exploring Chinese parenting and its complexities in various societies.

Objectives

1. To critically evaluate current research on Chinese parenting, focusing on the parenting constructs;2. Using Bronfenbrenner's bioecological model, encourage researchers to move beyond simplified constructs of parenting (e.g., Baumrind's authoritative, authoritarian styles) to better reflect current Chinese parents; and3. To demonstrate how researchers may unintentionally perpetuate stereotypes of parenting, not acknolwedging significant social, cultural, political, economic transformations in Chinese societies. In consequence, practitioners and social workers may ineffectively serve Chinese families, and ethnic families more broadly.