This newsletter theme issue contains five articles about the growing Latino population in the South and its impact on communities, particularly in rural areas. "Social Capital of Mexican Communities in the South" (Ruben Hernandez-Leon, Victor Zuniga) argues that, to understand and advocate for Mexican newcomer communities in the South,…

Social capital helps communities respond positively to change. Research into managing change through learning in communities and in small businesses, particularly farm businesses, has highlighted the importance of relationships between people and the formal and informal structure of communities to the quality of outcomes experienced by…

This book illustrates the benefits of integrating different approaches to community and regional development for rural Australia. The key theme is community capacity building through lifelong learning, seen as integration of formal, nonformal, and informal education and training at all levels. Other foci include the local-global context, issues…

In the Four Corners region of rural southwest Colorado is Battle Rock Charter School--a one-room school attended by students in grades 1-6 that live in McElmo Canyon. For most of the 1900s, the canyon's isolation meant that people lived and worked as they had in the previous century, and the community was allowed to retain its tiny school because…

This paper examines the social and economic impacts of Mexican immigration on Fresno (California). Since the early 1980s, immigration to California has been dominated by illegal immigrants from rural Mexico seeking agricultural jobs in rural California. This rural migration impacts urban centers in agricultural regions; these impacts lag the…

1996 National Teacher of the Year--a high school teacher from rural Minnesota--reflects on the 30 years of her career and on social changes that have necessitated that her community and local schools work toward cultural understanding. The community went from a mostly white, middle-class, conservative community to one with at least six different…

An Aleut community leader from the Pribilof Islands (Alaska) reflects on what he learned from the economic crisis that threatened the viability of his community during the 1980s. He suggests that the spiritual healing of the individual is central to the healing of the whole community, elimination of conflict, and fulfillment of any vision for the…

Presents an "Africentric" approach to mathematics education built on the thinking and realities of African American children. The article explains what constitutes a foreign pedagogy to African American students and describes a three-year collaborative project with a middle school teacher who has implemented a pedagogy of social change…

Asserts that, although research can be a powerful resource in guiding and fueling grass-roots social change, the community-based research enterprise often is contentious. Recommends collaborative research studies in which the researchers and practitioners work together from the project's inception. (CFR)

Presented a theoretical framework for understanding how community service affords opportunities for stimulating identity development in adolescents. Found that service experience can stimulate reflection on society's political organization and moral order and reflection on the adolescent's role in making that order change to reflect the student's…

This paper reports on a longitudinal study of four urban schools that sought to develop professional community as part of a restructuring process. The study focuses on how restructuring affected teachers' work over a 3-year period. It reports that the absence of structural conditions can impede the growth of professional community; however, their…

A guide for community leaders, extension staff, and community or rural development practitioners outlines the evolution of a regional training model for community-based problem solving in rural areas experiencing economic decline. The paper discusses the model's underlying concepts and implementation process and includes descriptions of four…

Passive coping behavior and traditional role-gender definitions affect learning needs of segments of the Mexican American adult community and may affect the behavioral development of younger family members. Networking within the community is useful in defining and meeting learning needs of adult Mexican Americans by creating cooperative,…

Thirteen papers on Kansas and Johnson County, Kansas history are presented. The papers were written by students in a course at the Johnson County Center for Local History or for independent study in local history. The papers are: "Conditions and Construction of Gardner Lake"; "The History of St. Joseph's Church, Shawnee,…

Because of the rising real cost of energy, geographic patterns that have dominated the contemporary metropolitan landscape are in a state of change. A conceptual model of the contemporary and future metropolitan landscape is presented to stimulate thought about the changes which may evolve in the spatial organization of urban regions as the real…