Orange County's public policy responses to youth gangs have involved overt suppression or educational interventions directed at ethnic minorities, particularly Chicanos. Such approaches overlook the multiethnic nature of gang violence and ignore the problem's roots--emerging economic, demographic, and residential patterns that produce…

Challenges the use of ethnicity as a predictor of school-level achievement because of its lack of manipulability, lack of intrinsic association with home processes, and inability to advance the understanding of models of school-level achievement. The use of socioeconomic status as a more robust predictor of school-level achievement is recommended.…

Reprint of 1973 letter issued by the Association Montessori Internationale to its members regarding signs that although people have been striving for greater general welfare, individual rights, freedom, and leisure, extending reduced work and more leisure to children will disrupt healthy development. Describes necessary environments for healthy…

Explores the historical roots of universalistic thinking about children's nature, their needs, and what constitutes healthy development. Considers the opportunities for a new psychology of childhood to be reconstructed in ways that pay more attention to the cultural dimensions, as well as to the socio-cultural process, of the subject. (Author)

Synthesizes the key aspects of Vygotsky's sociocultural theory of learning. Interprets classroom vignettes and child interviews from a first-grade science activity in light of Vygotsky's theory. (Author/CCM)

Transfer involves disembodying knowledge and transferring it for use in different contexts. Vocational knowledge arises in communities of practice, and difficulties arise in transferring it from one distinct community, such as a workplace, to another, such as a classroom. (SK)

Argues that the traditional philosophy of public service has remained relevant and vital to overall library reference service despite information technology and other societal changes. Topics include information and information technology; and economic, political, and social trends as they influence reference librarians and reference service.…

A lack of clarity continues as to the precise terminology and classification concerning the concepts of learning disabilities in the fields of school psychology and special education. This paper reviews the complex logical and socio-political issues of learning disabilities as they relate to current educational and social realities. (Author/JDM)

Explores the association between parental involvement (PI) and children's positive academic performance and social competence. Study examines the relations between a set of family and demographic risk factors and PI. Results reveal different patterns of relations between the risk factors studied-parental education, maternal depression, and…

Documents, compares, and analyzes the nature of spatial reasoning by practitioners (plumbers) in the workplace and students in the school setting while constructing solids, with given specifications, from plane surfaces. Results confirm the power of activity theory and its methodology in explaining and identifying the structural differences…

Focuses on gender differences in growth in mathematics achievement in relation to various social-psychological factors such as attitude towards mathematics, self-esteem, parents' academic encouragement, mathematics teachers' expectations, and peer influence. Results indicate that gender differences in growth in mathematics varied by the student's…

To be effective with rehabilitation counseling, counselors need to be aware of cultural patterns of drug use. This study analyzed trends in heroin use between 1990 and 1997 among the arrestee population in some parts of the South. Findings suggest geographic, ethnic, and age-related variables for heroin use. (JDM)

Examines the role of information and theories of "life in the round" through a study of ways in which inmates at a maximum-security prison for women in Neuse City (North Carolina) redefine their social world to survive incarceration. Findings from ethnographic research and interviews with 80 women at the prison revealed that a life in the round…

Critically reviews the question of childhood in the context of simultaneous globalization and atomization of social life. Discusses childhood in relation to children as consumers, children as interpreters, and children as actors. Suggests that these ideas help explain some of the tensions and disruptions that characterize the lives of some…

Examines the far-reaching cultural implications of a kind of writing not usually deemed culturally significant--school assignments. Studies 44 papers written in 1898 by senior class members of the Platteville Normal School in southwestern Wisconsin assigned to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of Wisconsin's statehood. Examines the cultural…