This paper examines shyness--its causes and its impact on children--and presents several strategies based on social learning theory for parents and teachers to help young children overcome shyness. The paper also describes a personal application of these strategies on a young girl. The strategies presented for parents and teachers are: (1) tell…

Place-based education, which draws from local culture, history, and geography to create a meaningful curriculum, holds particular promise for rural homeschooling. Following a brief review of the homeschooling phenomenon, this digest identifies ways that rural place-based education can counter common concerns about homeschooling. In 1999 about 1.7…

Faced with declining enrollments and poor morale, U.S. higher education must address the fundamental issue of how a modern society organizes to develop its people. A new human learning system requires citizen awareness of self-development needs, a sense of the individual's place in society, and interinstitutional cooperation. Examples are…

Grade 10 and 12 students from single-sex and coeducational schools were surveyed, comparing their perceptions of school emphasis on scholarship and achievement affiliation and nonacademic activities, and control and discipline. Coeducational schools were perceived to enjoy an advantage in social-emotional needs and to minimize regimentation and…

Argues that the lower class uses language to maintain social relationships more than to communicate information, and that lower and middle class differences in language usage explain much of the academic failure of disadvantaged and minority children. Proposes a functional approach for studying how language, socialization, and academic achievement…

Two groups of parents received behavioral skill training designed to modify child noncompliance. One group also received formal training in social learning principles. Results indicated that the group receiving social learning principles tended to perceive their children as better adjusted and tended to be more satisfied with treatment. (Author)

Rural people consistently support environmental protection less than urban people. Four hypotheses tested reasons for this using 1973-1978 General Social Survey data. Socialization in metropolitan areas which leads to favorable consideration of social solutions to environmental problems received the most support, but nothing explained much of the…

A social cognitive developmental model is presented integrating a Piagetian developmental model and Flavell's processing model, to describe three aspects of development. The utility of the model was tested in two studies. The results demonstrate that it is possible to increase children's social cognitive abilities instructionally. (Author/CTM)

Social degradation is related to family cohesion and peer group functions, both of which depend on cultural traditions. Research from Japan shows how a study of cognitive style and learning within the classroom must include psychocultural determinants related to social or ethnic identity and the awareness of disparaged minority status. (Author/GC)

The historically changing reproduction of labor is the thread which holds together all African schooling policies in South Africa, where from the beginning the early White settlers set up a labor-exploitative state. (Author)

This discussion of human-rights education suggests that educational goals should include the acceptance of the idea of equal opportunity and inalienable human rights. Course content should instill concern with experiences drawn more from students' immediate social experience than from textbooks. More advanced students need courses in global…

Used coercion theory to investigate aversive mother- child interactions. Literature indicated younger children produced higher rates of aversive interactions with their mothers. Mothers' role satisfaction varied as a function of such rates. Observation data showed mothers of aggressive children encountered higher rates of aversive interactions…

Former Berkeley Free Speech Movement activists' sociopolitical status, self constructions, perceptions of parents' child-rearing practices, and moral reasoning were compared with assessments made 11 years earlier. An argument was made for their continued political and psychosocial distinctiveness as a generational cohort although some important…

This paper integrates information from several areas regarding the use of discipline in American schools. The material provides a framework for conceptualizing what happens when children misbehave. (Author/MC)

A six-stage program was designed to teach students about the sexual problems of our society and to help them grow individually on three levels: general knowledge about sex; self-awareness; and social consciousness. The eight-week unit has received considerable support from parents. (FG)