True "liberal learning" often occurs far from our campuses and direct influence. The Ladakhi, a non-western culture located between Tibet, China, and Pakistan, passed on "liberal learning" as part of its communal experience. The Ladakhis were wealthy, self-sufficient, lived in roomy houses, had zero "gross national…

A learner who is not positively disposed to, or has a socio-cultural background that is indifferent to, learning science would find it hard to learn science effectively with the right attitudes. This study investigated if instruction through the use of the socio-cultural mode has any significant effect on a student's attitude towards the learning…

The purpose of this paper is to summarize current trends in child abuse prevention and to provide program administrators and policymakers with guidelines for implementing successful new parent programs in their communities. Contents address: (1) the scope of the child abuse problem; (2) a theoretical framework or conceptual model for use in…

The greeting systems in Nepali are derived from the Hindu ethos and religious culture, and can be traced back to Hindu sacred writing. However, as tied to conventions as they are, these systems are also the product of an interplay of socio-cultural factors. A study found that despite exposure to education and Western culture, Nepali modes of…

To clarify the relationships among education, employment, and technological research, this study constructs a planning model based on these areas' component fields and their complex interrelationships. Emphasizing that little research has been done on the relationships of education and technology and that little understanding has been achieved of…

For women, leaving home, marriage, childbearing, and remarriage can create drastic changes in income. Divorce or giving birth out of wedlock frequently accompanies entry into poverty, while marriage or remarriage often results in exit from poverty. In the United States since 1970, the increase in the number of poor women greatly exceeded that of…

The Lau Remedies, federal recommendations to help school districts comply with the law in providing education for non-English-speaking children, raised questions of language assessment and resulted in a variety of language tests. Four years later, an examination of 46 currently available language tests, in the context of commonly accepted notions…

Study of the use of baby talk in parental speech can illuminate the parent-child relationship, acquisition of adult language, the permissible modifications to language structure without diminishing meaning, and code-switching. This is illustrated in the baby talk embedded in adult-child conversation in the context of family and household in three…

One of the most important myths in education is that of progress. The idea derives from a specifically Western messianic tradition and contains the belief in the growth and the development of an organism. That belief emerges from Greek and Hebraic thought, is modified in Christian theology, and then is secularized in science. The persistence and…

Hospitality patterns of the Bororo Indians are illustrated in two examples: the etiquette due to a visiting chief from another Bororo village, and the etiquette due any common visitor from another Bororo village. Formal hospitality differs greatly from the usual etiquette. At a visiting chief's arrival, he enters as the last of his group and waits…

The paper outlines the "sociology of acceptance" as a theoretical framework for understanding relationships between people with mental retardation and typical people. Sociocultural perspectives on deviance are reviewed and their contribution to the study of mental retardation is considered. The paper next examines the nature of accepting…

A study of the lyrics of popular music was conducted to test the hypothesis that from the 1950s through the 1970s such songs placed a progressively greater emphasis upon physical as opposed to emotional love. Researchers analyzed the lyrics of the five most popular songs listed in "Billboard" magazine during every year from 1950 to 1980.…

Following a brief discussion of some characteristics of the Amish culture, data on work study skills from the Iowa Test of Basic Skills are reported for 23 pupils in grades 3, 4, 6, 7, and 8 in Pleasant Hill School near Bloomfield, Iowa. Percentile ranks ranged from 5 to 83. Eleven pupils scored above the fifteenth percentile on map skills and on…

A careful study of second language varieties (SLVs) of English, which have not yet entered the mainstream of sociolinguistic research because of neglect and misunderstanding, shows that they are qualitatively different from the categories recognized in current sociolinguistic typology. SLVs provide some of the clearest evidence of sociocultural…

In order to develop an understanding of the history of childhood, an interdisciplinary approach is needed. Such an analysis presents special challenges, since different traditions of inquiry and interpretation generate different research questions and correspondingly divergent versions of the past and its relationship to the present. At this point…