A comparison of two networks of citizens and parents leads to the conclusion that an effective citizen network in education should have a formal organization, structured leadership, specific goals, and a diverse and active membership. The rise of such groups is attributed to people's feelings that schools are failing to educate. These networks of…

The research reported here focuses on one aspect of the communicative environment, namely vocabulary. The central question motivating this research was whether there are social class and ethnic group differences in the vocabulary used in the home and in the school situation. A corpus of talk was searched for the use of words from four standardized…

The implications of physical and biological sex differences on sex role behavior cannot be understood without analyzing the complementary role of the sociocultural meaning of sex roles. The normative aspect of gender role behavior is fluid and can be affected by culture, class, and ethnicity. All societies recognize differences between the sexes.…

ONE OF THE GOALS OF EDUCATION IS HELPING EVERY LEARNER ACHIEVE HIS INDIVIDUAL POTENTIAL. IN DIRECTING EFFORT TOWARD THIS GOAL, EDUCATIONAL LEADERS MUST IDENTIFY AND MEET DIVERSE NEEDS IN THE FOLLOWING AREAS--(1) THE MATURITY OF THE LEARNER, (2) HIS PHYSICAL AND SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT, (3) HIS FAMILY BACKGROUND, (4) HIS PHYSICAL CONDITION, AND (5)…

A SCALE TO MEASURE THE LEVEL OF OCCUPATIONAL ASPIRATION (LOA) OF SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS AS A PREDICTIVE TOOL IN FUTURE OCCUPATIONAL CHOICE IS PRESENTED AND EXTENSIVELY EVALUATED IN THIS MONOGRAPH. THE OCCUPATIONAL ASPIRATION SCALE IS AN EASILY ADMINISTERED INSTRUMENT WHICH FOCUSES ON IDEALISTIC AND REALISTIC EXPRESSION LEVELS AS WELL AS ON…

The conclusions presented in a book entitled Inequality, written by Jencks, et al., call for a critical analysis of the popular beliefs regarding schools and schooling as a means to achieve the social, economic, and cultural goals of the American Dream. This meritocratic system offers equal opportunities but may yield unequal results. In the…

The objective of this study is to examine and compare the determinants of migration for households grouped first by race and then by poverty level. Household demographic and economic characteristics are defined in the context of a linear probability function. A measure of the expected gain from migration is developed to reflect the relative…

Reported in this document is the development of nine instruments designed to measure social values thought to be "important in the interpersonal relationships" of adolescents and in their relationships with parents and teachers. The instruments sought to measure selected prescriptive values, "some of the social backgrounds for the acquisition of…

The measurement of sociolinguistic behavior requires the formulation of a unit which can take into account continuous, ordered variation within and across discrete linguistic types--the linguistic variable. The linguistic variable, itself an abstraction, is realized in actual speech behavior by variants. The formulation of the linguistic variable…

A within cultural comparative examination of three samples of school-children residing in Saskatchewan, South Australia and Nova Scotia enabled the effects of family size and socioeconomic status on measured intelligence to be ascertained. Samples of schoolchildren in Regina (Canada), Adelaide (Australia) and Sydney (Canada), divided into…

Effects of a new type of problem-solving instructional material and a reinforcement method called Premack on problem-solving skills of elementary school children is investigated. The problems provided were an extension of the materials developed for the Purdue Elementary Problem-Solving Inventory. The Premack Principle of behavior modification…

A study was conducted of how children's expectations for their own school performance develop over their first-grade year and what factors influence these expectations. Expectations for performance in reading and arithmetic were studied. Both middle class and lower class (black and white) children have higher expectations than their subsequent…

The human life course is examined so as to clarify the nature and meaning of age to members of different social classes at different periods of their lives. The author utilizes a developmental framework: life is made up of interlinked role sequences involving cumulative learning. Each stage builds on the previous one. Within this framework, the…

In this report, previous studies are reviewed in order to reconsider the assumption that lower class black children are generally deficient in their ability to produce syntactically elaborated speech. Though several studies have seemed to confirm the elaboration-deficiency hypothesis, the evidence presented is not convincing. Specific critiques of…

This paper analyzes the relative impacts that geographic and social class differences have on the participation rates in a country's educational programs. The author reasons that while regional disparities are common in many countries and differences between rural and urban areas are large, socioeconomic distributions account for most of the…