Gender equality is a widely recognized value. Still, on the practical level, it is not easy to achieve true gender equality. Gender has proved to be a complicated issue both for research and practice. Gender change projects trying to make changes in detected disadvantages have repeatedly run into a problem: it is difficult to put gender issues on…

The education literature has not adequately considered the notion of change at its most fundamental level. This paper considers notions of institutional or social change from the ontological perspective of H. R. Maturana. The pattern of organization in living systems is defined by Maturana and Varela (1980) as "autopoiesis," a coined…

Previous research on high school status consistently found a status structure characterized by extensive ranking and group salience. This case study, using observations and interviews, documents the emergence of a new pattern: status pluralism. The study was conducted in a medium-sized urban high school of about 1,000 students, who were nearly…

The existing knowledge of the school environment is reviewed in this book, with a focus on its impact on educational effectiveness and student achievement. Chapter 1 examines how the composition of educational groups affect learning; chapter 2 focuses on the learning climate and cultures--the norms and values that characterize learning…

This book offers parents an understanding of the nature and role of adolescent friendship. Chapter 1 presents an introduction to the topic of friendship and examines the benefits and characteristics of friendship, types of love, attachment styles, and contextual features that affect friendship. Chapter 2 discusses friendship stages across the…

Comparative educators can enhance research by developing and including in their research findings a cognitive map to show perceptions of how knowledge claims interrelate. Three research relationships utilize different methodologies: (1) the researcher objectifies the phenomena; (2) the researcher position is preferential to the research object but…

Social scientists have traditionally assumed that marriage and widowhood are the crucial life events for women, and that retirement has no effect on women's social relationships. To explore the relationship between women's work status and perception of peer and power relationships, a thematic apperceptive procedure was used. A sample of 1,428…

Presents estimates for a structural equations model of the social, structural, and personality antecedents of two forms of early career alienation, self-estrangement and powerlessness, finding that the two forms of alienation are affected by different patterns of structural and personality antecedents originating at various stages in the first…

A large body of literature was reviewed to examine the concept of community education. The review was based on the sociological concept of power as it pertains to education--how power enters into educational institutions through formal decision-making procedures, methods of assessment, and views of knowledge. The study began with a schematic…

Various social, psychological, and linguistic explanations for language variation are examined from the perspective of a fundamental principle that seems to underline interaction, language, and society. That principle lies in the paradigm "same and different." The dialectic resulting from this paradigm is at the basis of the notions of…

Suburban middle class American situation comedies of the 1950s and 1960s idealized the postwar family ensemble with its unproblematic achievement of quality family life. The homemaker as portrayed in these sitcoms was positioned at the center of the postwar consumer economy by the consumer product industry, which built its economy on defining the…

Current trends in psychological research stress the role of family members in developmental studies, and this trend may be applied to the study of divorce and child custody in Japan. Japanese families are influenced by other social systems, including neighborhood and religious groups, and traditionally these systems have combined with relatives to…

The paper describes a computer-based project designed to help college instructors teach introductory sociology. The project combines a variety of orientations to expose students to basic sociological concepts, classic theories, and the breadth of the discipline. Two traditional methods of teaching sociology include relying on different instructors…

This paper places race relations theory within the general theory of human behavior which combines behaviorist psychology and Marxist theory. It argues for a revisionist theory of race relations where a situation or condition leads to a behavior pattern (discrimination) which in turn leads to an attitude (racism or prejudice). This…

Procedures package includes (1) general introduction, (2) director's handbook, and (3) three exercise--in pull-out format.