Reported are the results of an experiment in which twelve different conservation of length tasks, indicative of passage from Piaget's pre-operational to concrete operations stages of cognitive development, were administered to a sample of individuals from Imbonggu-speaking people, a remote and traditional society in Papua New Guinea. Individuals…

An ethnographic study of five clerk-typists and five applications clerks in a large federal agency included observations, interviews, and a 3-week job literacy program. Both in their performance on job tasks and in the tests and exercises in the literacy program, the clerks demonstrated a number of strategies by which they quickly locate…

A qualitative evaluation related to the creation of a Regional High School of Excellence (RHSE) in upstate New York is described. The focus is on a summer pilot study of the RHSE conducted while the continuation of the project was jeopardized by proposed budget cuts. The stages of development, problems involved in passing the proposal through the…

Using a theoretical framework known as family systems theory, an exploratory study in progress is examining the role of media in the home. Three areas representative of the research are: (1) the place of mass media in the roles of the individual family members; (2) how the media regulate interactions between family members; and (3) the function of…

The ways in which principal belief systems develop in relation to superintendent role expectations for principals are described in this paper. Methodology included a literature review and participant observation during a 6-month field study to generate grounded theory. Findings indicate that superintendents' communication of role expectations to…

This study investigated the use of drama in a Spanish native language literacy course to engage adult students in the process of discussing their world. Nine 2-hour class sessions with 18 students were videotaped. During this period, using the theory of emancipatory education, the students developed a theater script based on an incident in a…

Although systematic national surveys of the recruitment and personal profiles of school board members are regularly conducted in the United States, few demographic or ethnographic studies have been conducted in Canada, in general, or in Ontario, in particular. This paper reviews (1) the brief history of school board recruitment and constituency in…

Perspectives on research in comparative education are presented in 17 articles originally published in the "Comparative Education Review." The objective is to present an array of new viewpoints, orientations, and approaches. Titles and authors are: "Introduction: Perspectives on Comparative Education" (Philip G. Altbach, Gail P. Kelly); "Critical…

A collection of 23 brief texts in Guinaang Kalinga (called Guininaang by native speakers), gathered in the Guinaang region of the Philippines, are presented with ethnographic and linguistic notes and translations. The texts address topics of common cultural patterns, history, and storytelling. An introductory section describes the sources and…

Certain scholars in anthropology and education have recently suggested as an approach to combat school failure for minority students the concept of cultural congruence--the idea that learning is best accomplished in classrooms compatible with the cultural context of the communities they are supposed to serve. Although this concept is yet to be…

The category of the social increasingly informs the way people think about rhetoric. The foregrounding of the social has a two-fold origin in an uneasy relationship between poststructuralism and sociolinguistics. Poststructuralism has provided a strong version of the hypothesis that language is determinative. Sociolinguistics has established that…

Written by history students at Gary High School, Gary, Texas, this volume presents several diverse pictures of life in East Texas. The first article, "Jim Driver, Panola County Oil and Gas Boom," (Bobby Kelly and Billy Anderson) talks about drilling for oil and gas and the concerns of an employee of the drilling company. "When I Was…

Using data collected from 4,042 lessons taught by 19 student teachers, this report examines the extent and purpose of media utilization by student teachers who were completing field experience requirements for teacher certification in 15 Saskatchewan schools during the fall semester of 1981. Following a description of the problem and methodology,…

This study elaborates the cultural categories of meanings used by seventh-graders at a junior high school to describe their teachers. It examines the common expressions students used in open-ended interviews to describe their teachers and their experience within these teachers' classes. A semantic structure that underlies the terms that students…

Ethnographic data on schools are used as the basis for commenting on two issues that concern British educational policy-makers: the crisis of control in the classroom, and the cut-back in initial teacher training. An ethnographic review of classroom control indicates that physical and verbal aggression by students is rare, and that such aggression…