Describes three conceptual models that have been used to explain the relationship between cultural factors and the counseling process. Offers a fourth model of conceptualizing the role of ethnicity or class in the counseling process. An example of how the model can be used as a guide for school counselors is also given. (CH)

Encourages counselors and other human development professionals to provide human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) prevention programing that is sensitive to social and cultural contexts of groups being addressed. Focuses on women, gay and bisexual men, African Americans, and Latinos. Provides necessary…

Presents an overview of the sociocultural differences between U.S. and Asian Indian cultures, the implications of those differences, and suggestions for counseling techniques and approaches for working with Asian Indian immigrants. Discusses immigration pattern and history of Asian Indians, looks at cultural orientation of Asian Indians, and…

Discusses recent books and articles on social class in the United States. Notes how U.S. citizens are lulled, first, into accepting the notion of classlessness and, then, into an Us-versus-Them stance that pits teachers against an ostensibly stupid and surly, albeit ill-defined, group of "others." (SR)

Notes that it has not been easy to find a discourse to address the ways that unexamined attitudes about race, class, language, and gender perpetuate failure in schools. Describes briefly the work of the Committee on English Education's Commission on Teacher Education for Teachers of Urban, Rural, and Suburban Students of Color and the attempts to…

Suggests that an examination of rhetorical practices at the local bar is instructive: (1) the barroom is predictably different from the university writing classroom; and (2) the barroom is surprisingly similar to the university writing classroom. Shows that the rhetoric that is valued most highly in today's writing classroom operates differently…

The existence of social differences in educational achievement as a social fact presents the sociology of education with a challenge to which it has responded with indifferent success. It is argued that contemporary explanations that dismiss the existence and relevance of differences in cognitive performance arising as a consequence of class…

The social class differences impact students' engagement with literacy practices in the classrooms. Teachers must hear and validate stories of poverty to gain class-specific understanding.

This paper attempts to explicate and locate the concept of 'cultural capital' in terms of Pierre Bourdieu's more general theory of the forms of capital and their transubstantiations. It examines the manner in which the relationship between the economic field, and its relations of inequality and power, and the cultural field involves a process of…

The author and her mentor, Loudell Snow, were standing in the anthropology department's shabby little lounge, discussing the merits of French wine. Lou was teasing her for being partial to French wine since she is French American. "Hey, I thought that you're an American Indian, but now you are saying you are French? Make up your mind!" Lou and the…

Africa produces imaginative and authentic literature whose texture makes it impossible to think of Africans as statistics. African writers, however have to struggle to get recognized in America due to their culture and other racial and social differences, hence suggesting that efforts should be made to give authentic African literature its due.

Drawing upon critical analyses of participant observations of classrooms, school documents, and in-depth interviews with teachers, administrators, and school-district supervisors conducted from 1999 to 2002, this qualitative study employs a post-structuralist framework to probe one US public elementary school's quest to realize educational equity…

This article addresses an enduring concern in the sociology of education: how social class differences are reproduced through schooling. In particular it focuses on the functioning of pedagogy in this regard. The article presents a model that elucidates the inner logic of pedagogy in order to reveal the structuring of inequality with respect to…

Although teen pregnancy and birth rates in the United States declined for ten straight years during the 1990s and were less than half of comparative figures from 1957, the year of the all-time high of teen pregnancy, nearly one in ten teenage young women still became pregnant in 2001, with half of these young women giving birth. Teen pregnancy…

This article analyzes Chicago's new Renaissance 2010 school plan to close public schools and reopen them as choice and charter schools. Grounding the analysis in participatory research methods, the authors argue that Chicago's education accountability policies have laid the groundwork for privatization. They furthermore argue that Renaissance 2010…