Rural youth are a diverse group not only geographically, but socioeconomically, ethnically, and culturally as well. Historically, the rural student has not achieved as well as his urban counterpart in high school or in post secondary education. There is evidence that this is beginning to change and that rural students are doing as well or better…

Ten teachers who had experienced two and three decades of classroom teaching were interviewed to determine what stages their careers had passed through and how their attitudes had changed over the years. The teaching careers of these individuals were characterized by early job mobility, high satisfaction in the first decade followed by…

To identify personal, economic, educational, and social factors influencing students' educational aspirations, data were collected from 1,004 seniors in Prince Edward Island, Canada, in 1971; analysis included male-female and urban-rural differences. From 960 usable questionnaires, level of educational aspiration was determined by respondents'…

In a study using qualitative and quantitative indicators to measure adjustment to retirement, it was proposed that people come to understand who they are in relation to the other social objects in their environment, including other persons. The study sample was comprised of 12 retired and 12 nonretired persons, all within about 18 months of their…

Using methods employed by Chaikin et al (1974) and Chaikin and Derlega (1978) to determine when tutors are susceptible to expectancy effects and whether expectancies lead to discrimination against low ability students, black undergraduates (N=76) taught a lesson on fire safety at home to a 10-year-old boy. Two black male and two white male…

The objectives of this workshop module are to help teachers recognize the power of their expectations to influence the behavior and perception of students, to identify commonly held expectations for the sexes and the self-fulfilling consequences of these expectations, and to examine the inappropriateness of differential expectations based on sex.…

As part of a continuing effort to assess the social impacts on communities of energy facility planning, construction, operation, and decommissioning, a May 1977 survey of 37 community leaders in Hartsville, Tennessee (site of a nuclear power plant) establishes major local issues (past, present, and future) which leaders feel are important to…

A survey involving 1,639 freshmen and 244 seniors was conducted at the State University of New York at Buffalo (SUNY/B) in 1976 to determine freshmen expectation of faculty behavior and seniors' perception of their major and non-major faculty. Freshmen expected, for the most part, that the faculty they would have their first year would communicate…

A sociologist and clinical psychologist presents portraits of the conflicts that men, women, and institutions confront in their experience of contemporary higher education. Parents, students, and faculty talk about success and failure, frustration and achievement in the academic world. Drawing these portraits together are discussions of the…

Elusive developmental processes are most often examined in the context of the philosophic problem of scientific determinism. The Markov process model, enhancing a probabilistic viewpoint for the explanation of developmental data, should be restricted. Attention should be focused on the immediate context and situational setting of a subject. The…

LaGuardia Community College (New York) provides secondary education through its Middle College program, which includes comprehensive remedial programs for low ability students. During the 1974-75 academic year, two participant observers made over 400 observations of the Middle College's activities, focusing on: (1) instructional methods,…

The purpose of this longitudinal study was to describe kindergarten children's abilities, evaluate the effect of teacher expectations on kindergarten performance, and explore the predictive validity of kindergarten performance for later reading ability. An original sample of approximately 450 kindergarten children was tested with a school…

How do the expectations for bilingual educational programs of legislators, educators, parents, students and ethnic leaders match one another? What expectations are implicit in the actual practice of schools, of homes, of evaluators? How does all this fit in with what we understand about the best way for children to learn a language? This paper…

This paper discussed a stage theory of childhood, preadolescent, and adolescent concepts of role-relationships and social reasoning in friendship. It was hypothesized that these concepts develop through levels of perspective-taking, within which individuals view and structure interpersonal relationships. At level one, relationships are based on…

Using questionnaire derived-data from randomly selected Northeast Alabama high schools, an historical comparison was made of the educational goals of 924 seniors in 1966 (19 schools) and 918 seniors in 1972 (15 of the same schools). Differences in the status projections of 1966 youth (438 males and 486 females) and their 1972 counterparts (470…