In his well-known article "The Coming White Underclass" and other writings Charles Murray has suggested that welfare is the primary cause of out-of-wedlock childbearing. He contends that welfare, including Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), food stamps, and subsidized housing, should be eliminated. While Murray's views have…

Critical evaluation of instructional materials is an important but often neglected aspect of instructional preparation. This study proposes evaluation that is more theoretically grounded in sociocultural and context-sensitive bases than are many evaluation guides. A new instrument was developed and applied to materials for teacher education as…

The development of vocational education in modern China may be traced through four stages. The progress made during the experimental stage (1949-1965) was largely reversed during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), at which time many secondary technical and vocational high schools were closed. The period 1977-1984 marked a recovery stage when…

This article discusses factors affecting parents in contemporary Europe. The focus is on family development, mechanisms conditioning social and family interactions, and the historical processes that are resulting in changes in family structure. Family changes discussed include the declining birthrate, structural conditions for parenthood, changing…

This paper describes the construction of an alternative framework for minority, specifically Chicano, student participation in predominantly Anglo colleges and universities. The framework described in this paper is based on a two-year, in-depth study investigating the experiences and actions of two first-generation college students who identify…

This paper examines the plight of the child with a learning disability who enters a classroom to hear only a foreign language, to misunderstand the accompanying nonverbal signals, and to see only alien symbols written on the board. This child with a learning disability will have difficulty in the classroom unless the teacher applies the basic…

The National Household Survey on Drug Abuse (NHSDA) has shown that the rate of marijuana use among youth has more than doubled since 1992. Similar trends are noted across all subgroups studied. At the same time, the percentage of teens perceiving a "great risk" from smoking marijuana has declined. Negative effects of marijuana use are…

The Success for All school restructuring program is currently being implemented in more than 1,100 elementary schools throughout the United States, primarily in urban locations. Quantitative and qualitative analyses of the quality of implementation were conducted in a sample of more than 350 of these schools to examine how the Success for All…

The aim of this review is to identify and examine the rhetorical features, conventions, and sociocultural contexts that students engage when they enter an academic discourse community. The review seeks to identify and analyze the intertextual relationships between teacher/authority recommendations and the development of student autonomy and voice…

A study was done to examine the role of self monitoring in choice of college major. A self monitor is an individual who adopts a social orientation so that he/she can manage self presentation. Self monitors are likely to modify their academic choices to fit social situations or others' expectations. Subjects of the study were 38 male and 54 female…

Emotional child abuse is virtually inevitable in the context of the traditional nuclear family and often has a more detrimental effect on children than other, more widely publicized forms of maltreatment. This paper documents clinical, statistical, and empirical evidence showing that "normative" child-rearing practices in our culture have…

The guide provides a brief introduction to the culture and language of Italy, and is designed for visitors, students, and business travelers. It offers practical information on various aspects of daily living, including: money; food; restaurants; hotels; postal and telecommunications services; transportation; shopping; health and medical care;…

Materials concerning dialects and language variation are presented here as background information for a workshop on English dialect differences in elementary and secondary schools. Articles and essays include: "Grammatical, Phonological and Language Use Differences across Cultures" (Walt Wolfram); "A Linguistic Description of Social Dialects"…

The workbook accompanies the "Intermediate Pashto" textbook (FL 019 797), and provides additional explanations, in English, of Pashtun culture and Pashto grammar. It also contains additional exercises, with answer keys. The units and sections correspond to those of the textbook. Unit overviews are intended to be read, with parallel…

After discussing the mediating effect of cultural tradition on perceived objective reality and the need for a model that constructs paths from cultural factors to social behavior, this document describes a path model developed as a result of an investigation of two human resource development policy paradigms that were enforced alternately between…