This book attempts to engage theoretical questions of ethnicity, ideology, and identity as they are lived out by Aymara students in a small teachers' college in rural Bolivia. A year of fieldwork at the Escuela Normal Rural "Kollasuyo" focused on the experiences of Aymara students during their intensive training to become rural teachers,…

There is an immense gap between the success that Maine's elementary school children achieve on national tests and the rate at which they go on to postsecondary education. This gap is not explained by Maine's low per capita income. Maine's homogeneous population created a culture valuing hard work, independence, pragmatism, family, community,…

Compares the preferences of university and middle school students for non-western music as communicated through a Likert-type scale, manipulation of one dial on a Continuous Response Digital Interface (CRDI) during music listening, and manipulation of two dials on a CRDI during music listening. (MJP)

Identifies and defines four models of internal ethnic conflict and discusses those conflicts within various African nations. The corresponding models and countries include Integration Model: Botswana and Somalia; Managed Diversity Model: Ghana, Cote d'Ivorie, Kenya, and Nigeria; Ambivalent Accommodation Model: Ethiopia and Djibouti; and Acute…

Discusses the lessons that can be drawn from the attempted implementation of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD). Examines the role of ICERD in Yugoslavia, Rwanda, and Burundi. Assesses those situations and states where ICERD was most and least effective. (MJP)

Reviews the four articles in this special theme issue. Relates the articles to a broadened understanding of the concept of integration and its implications for education in the next century. (FMW)

In a doctoral study undertaken at Edith Cowan University the author set out to investigate the influence of home and school environments on the academic performance and educational/occupational aspirations of high school students from eight Chinese-Australian and Anglo-Australian families residing in a middle class suburb of Perth metropolitan…

Gossip has mainly been investigated as an oral discourse practice, one that serves as a mechanism to reaffirm relationships and to construct, monitor and maintain social norms and values within communities. This study investigates how a group of Aboriginal English speaking teenage girls constructed norms, values and identities in their email…

"The Opportunity Gap" aims to shift attention from the current overwhelming emphasis on schools in discussions of the achievement gap to more fundamental questions about social and educational opportunity. The achievement gap looms large in the current era of high-stakes testing and accountability. Yet questions persist: Has the…

Part of a series exploring how language influences and is influenced by educational processes, this book describes difficulties boys and girls experience in learning to read and write due to gendered divisions of labor. The book draws on an ethnographic study that followed 13 children from kindergarten through second grade and found that, in…

A study of second language learning processes had three goals: to establish a grounded theory on the role of tension, both euphoric and dysphoric, in the formal language learning process; to provide a comprehensive ethnography of the 7-week intensive beginners' class in the French School of Middlebury College (Vermont); and to demonstrate how a…

An ethnographic study was conducted of the first year of implementation of the Accelerated Schools Project in a pilot middle school. The interaction between intervention and the existing school culture is studied through multiple interviews with teachers, support staff, administrators, students, and parents as well as observation and review of…

This paper summarizes an ethnographic study of three kindergarten and three first grade bilingual classrooms which investigated the impact on the school community of two conditions: (1) when teachers and staff were trained in cooperative methods for teaching and learning a second language; and (2) when the school initiated and implemented a parent…

French elementary school teachers as well as the parents of their pupils remember being quiet students in teacher-dominated classrooms. Yet today both teachers and parents idealize lively classroom participation by their pupils or children. In this study, teachers and parents in an urban school district in Villefleurie, France, watched videotaped…

A study undertaken by the American Council of Teachers of Russian (ACTR) and National Foreign Language Center (NFLC) is described. The project was designed to examine the process and results of language study abroad. The first phase of the project was a statistical analysis of the relationship between student characteristics (demographic and…