To determine how basal readers reflect the different kinds of family living found in American society today, information was gathered through an analysis of 462 stories relating to family life in eight basal reading series in grades one to six and a single series in grades one through three. Only fiction stories about children were used. The…

Sub-Saharan Africa faces a historic challenge: to achieve economic and social progress while experiencing extraordinary population growth. With an estimated 1989 population of 512 million, the 42 countries of sub-Saharan Africa have the highest birth and death rates of any major world region. Throughout the region, population has outstripped…

The United States is experiencing a major demographic transformation. Some studies have projected that by the year 2020, whites will be in the minority as their number is surpassed by those of Indian, Asian, African, and Spanish descent, to name a few. Educators must make a major commitment to see that all students have the opportunity to perform…

Studying local and national population distribution, as well as economic and social patterns, is becoming crucial for educators who serve rapidly changing communities. School officials should take into consideration the tremendous diversity in cultures, economic and family situations, and educational levels existing within an ethnic group. Several…

This study examined characteristics of the relationship between mothers and adolescent daughters in 24 African American families--12 middle class and 12 working class--and compared these findings to similar past research done on white middle class mother-daughter dyads. Specific questions addressed in this study were constructed around recurring…

The literature of psycholinguistics and multilingualism is reviewed to examine the relationship between macrological social variables such as social class, and individual variables related to language behavior in a multilingual setting. The growing body of evidence assessing the link between certain social and community dimensions and specific…

Three demographic rates and the social reality they measure signify important, continuing changes in the Swedish family. As compared with the rest of the industrial world, the Swedish now have the lowest marriage rate, the highest non-marital cohabitation rate, and possibly the highest family dissolution rate. Contents of this article focus on the…

Four community liaisons for public school programs for limited- English-proficient (LEP) populations discuss briefly aspects of parent involvement. Dama Garate describes the populations served by the Trinity-Arlington Project in the Arlington (Virginia) Public Schools and suggests issues to be considered in parent involvement efforts. Pirun Sen of…

Effective management of time is described from a cultural viewpoint, using examples from four case studies based on a one-year research project on college and university decision-making. Three dimensions of time in colleges and universities are important: formal/informal; historical; and seasonal/ceremonial. The environment, external…

Using ethnographic methods of field work and data analysis, this study investigated one example of a comprehensive senior high school to illuminate the nature of its organizational structure and the way in which organizational control and leadership is exercised. Three principal findings emerged from theme analysis of the data. First,…

A language research project investigated the phenomenon of transcreation, that is, the transference of the linguistic markers, communicative strategies, cultural notions, social elements, and contextual clues of the local culture to the native English variety. The focus is on the relationship between language and gender and the contribution of…

A study surveyed 276 residents of Indianapolis, Indiana to determine how the people might be changing media use and spending habits in a time of growing interest in video cassette recorders (VCRs), backyard satellite dishes, pay-TV, and personal computers. Questions were designed to determine the degree to which people would buy into the new…

This paper examines the results of two sociolinguistic studies of the Arabic spoken by men and women in Jordan and Syria in terms of sex differentiation in Arabic. The study reported in this paper proposes that the terms "prestigious" and "standard" should not be used interchangeably; accordingly, it reinterprets the previous…

Chinese students' reading strategies are shaped by their cultural assumptions and by the background information, or lack of it, that they bring to the material. Most important, their reading strategies are influenced by (1) traditional methods of reading that have led to investigating each word without always understanding the general concepts of…

A number of major social and demographic trends are having a profound effect on American families with young children. Among these are changes in the characteristics of poverty in families with preschool-age children, curtailment of formerly available financial support or changes in the means of obtaining such support, and the increasing cost of…