Explores forces of tradition and community and pressures to find work and succeed in "modern" world on lives of rural youth. Examines data on 46 youth (aged 17-24) from Sawyer, Maine. Suggests lessons for social service professionals as they help youth, their families, and their communities build constructive future lives. (NEC)

Investigates the effects of sociocultural changes on variables related to adolescents' self-concepts. Traditional and transitional adolescents from two cities in North India completed Indian adaptations of various questionnaires and rating scales. Results suggest the powerful influences of macrostructural variables (like sociocultural changes) on…

An American educator evaluates education experts' current infatuation with the Japanese educational system. She cautions against importing Japan's educational methods to the United States and urges educators to look at the cultural values that produce both systems. She provides thoughtful anecdotes from her experiences visiting Japanese schools to…

The values, norms, and behaviors of the lower class Black community are inconsistent with achievement in American society and with the ethos characteristic of much of the Black middle class. Black leadership should directly address the problems faced by poor urban Blacks through constructive, internal institution building. (Author/KH)

Two experiments were conducted to determine how initial task experiences of success and failure combine with observation of task outcomes in same-age, same-sex peers to affect the achievement expectations of second and third graders. The first experiment involved lower class urban Black children; the second involved middle class rural White…

Comparison of never pregnant teenagers, adolescent and older mothers was undertaken to determine differences on (1) an overall infant development test, (2) a developmental infant abilities test, and (3) first and second year infant abilities test. Findings are discussed in terms of differences in social class and parent child interaction styles.…

Willis's ethnographic study "Learning to Labour" affirmed the education system as a site of the transmission of class inequality and showed that this transmission is not the result of mechanistic social reproduction but rather of cultural processes within schools. The study and Willis's thoughts on the subject since the study was…

Longitudinally investigated possible continuities between parents' and teachers' reports of problem behavior of 535 children three to eight years old and whether early language development was related to later behavioral deviance. Along with demographic differences, results showed early language structure and behavior problems at age three were…

Discusses some of the broader cultural influences that precede (and go beyond) ethnic influences in children's behaviors and attitudes and teachers' interpretations of them. Those influences that affect students' as well as teachers' behaviors and attitudes include perpetuation of the conflicting values of individualism and cooperation, locale,…

A study on the political consciousness of family groups in Warsaw confirms that current political events may be an important agent of political socialization. The rise of Solidarity and other events of 1980-81 influenced, in different ways, the perception of social differentiations among teenagers and their parents. (Author/CS)

Suggests how parents can assess a school's effectiveness by examining criterion referenced standardized achievement test results. Discusses (1) which test results will be used, (2) how the data should be analyzed, and (3) into what groups students should be separated to compare test results. (GC)

Evaluates fourth-to seventh-grade children on two aspects of social cognition: interpersonal understanding and means-ends problem-solving ability. Relates the two variables to sex, age, IQ, social class, and multiple dimensions of competence. Both variables significantly correlated with I.Q. while interpersonal understanding also correlated with…

Major findings were (1) White subjects and males in this investigation were reared in an ideologically nondirectional situation, making them relativistic in their moral judgments; (2) Black subjects and females followed a directional process resulting in a moral realistic orientation; and (3) socioeconomic factors did not bear strongly on the type…

The relationship between career maturity and self-concepts of 252 sixth-grade black males was investigated. Results indicated relatively weak-positive relationships between career maturity and self-concepts. Significant career maturity differences were found. However, self-concepts of the three groups were not statistically significantly…

This is an exploratory study of the reactions that 65 European American preservice teachers had to the community service learning (CSL) component of a multicultural education course. The CSL project was intended to facilitate the development of intercultural competence and to foster the idea of teachers as agents of social justice. Data analysis…