The major issue investigated in this paper is whether or not any change appears over a five-year peiod in the differences in performances between minority and non-minority students in that district. Since the relative performance advantage of non-minority students is frequently ascribed to their better backgrounds, socio-economic factors are held…

Preferences for 92 values, obtained from a survey of cross-cultural studies of values, were obtained from two separate and geographically distant sets of groups consisting of black and white males and females of lower- and middle-Class status. The middle-class black population was of insufficient size to include, however. Value preferences were…

The purposes of this study were to determine: (1) if differences existed in the self-concept among Negro, Anglo, and Spanish American students; and (2) the extent to which these differences were influenced by ethnic group membership, socioeconomic position, sex, or the interaction among these variables. This study was carried out in a New Mexico…

The aim of this research was to determine the relative importance of certain variables for different social classes in the formation of positive attitudes toward school and school work. In the first study, complete data were obtained from 884 third-year junior school pupils in 28 schools located throughout England. Attitude toward school was…

We need to find out the extent to which individual differences, social class differences and race differences in rates of cognitive development, and differential patterns of relative strength and weakness are attributable to genetically conditioned biological growth factors. The answers to this question might imply differences in our approach to…

This study investigates the development of multiplicative classification skills in lower class black and middle class white children on tasks which contain either three-dimensional objects or two-dimensional pictorial representations of the same objects. Multiplicative classification refers to the simultaneous classification of objects into two or…

The usefulness of the social class construct for life-cycle research is discussed in this paper. Social class is defined as used in the paper, and as it is generally used by students of the human life cycle. It is further evaluated as a descriptor, and a predictor of behaviors and attitudes. The construct seems to be most useful in studies of…

There are seven major sets of differences between young children of different economic backgrounds. The middle class child, compared to the lower class child, generally exhibits: (1) better language comprehension and expression, (2) richer schema development, involving mental preparation for the unusual, (3) stronger attachment to the mother,…

Five papers and an introduction are included in the report of the proceedings of the second invitational conference on school needs of Mexican American youth. Titles of the papers are "Meeting Guidance Needs of Mexican American Youth -- An Introduction,""The Role of the Principal in Establishing a Guidance Program in a Mexican American…

Previous studies have demonstrated that certain differences in speech behavior can be related to the social characteristics of speakers. However, these studies have not explicitly examined the effect of level of linguistic analysis on correlations observed between language variables and status variables. Three levels of analysis of a linguistic…

As the major instrument for the discovery and training of talent, the school in contemporary technological society plays an increasingly deterministic role in the selection of individuals for particular occupations and, hence, particular positions in the social hierarchy. The Netherlands was chosen as a research site because the consequences of…

A major objective of the study reported here was to assess how open the opportunity structure is for minority youth motivated enough to acquire vocational training. A second objective was to examine in detail a critical phase of the occupational cycle, the first few years in the labor force, which research has shown is critical for occupational…

This research was designed to compare the responses of disadvantaged and advantaged 5-year-olds in typical Piagetian experiments, in order to determine whether differences exist in the normative characteristics of centering, conservation, egocentricity, space conception, and irreversibility. A sample of 60 children was drawn from a metropolitan…

Social scientists with an interest in education policy have devoted a great deal of time in recent years to assessing if the level of per pupil school expenditures is related to any outputs of formal education that are valued by our society. In this paper we develop several alternative models for the purpose of estimating the effects of per pupil…

Those of us who are committed to the pedagogical enterprise are called upon to re-examine, clarify, and perhaps justify the presuppositions, methods, and goals that provide the framework within which education and development are carried on. Recent publications by several writers have reintroduced notions that demand critical examination,…