The application of cultural materialism, a Darwinistic approach to social forces, reveals that human learning is ultimately governed by the required process of human energy procurement. This "ethno-logic" interpretation of the correlation between techno-environmental levels and human learning stands in contrast to the conventional but…

An ethnographic study examined the role of language in an economics classroom. The researcher became an undergraduate economics student for one semester and concluded that the language practices in that economics classroom were represented neither by the transmission model nor the process approach to writing. The most valuable part of this…

The Los Angeles Unified School District's Permit with Transportation (PWT) Program allows volunteering students to be bused to attend schools other than those to which they would normally be assigned on the basis of residential location. Described are aspects of student participants' experiences, and of PWT Program activities at four receiving…

Part of a continuing series intended for use by reading professionals interested in understanding and improving the reading of adolescents, this report contains five articles dealing with a variety of subjects. Specific topics discussed in the articles include (1) remedial readers' comprehension during silent and oral reading, (2) recall and…

This report describes the ethnographic phase of a 2-year study (consisting of ethnographic observation and a survey) on how perceptions of home and school climates and interaction between the two factors might affect school performance among students of different racial/ethnic groups, sex, and socioeconomic status. Ethnographic case studies of…

This monograph represents the results of an attempt to construct at least one portion of a theoretical framework for describing and analyzing the performance routines used by the native actor to realize his competence to make culturally appropriate decisions. In general the concern is to describe in theoretical terms the structure and operation of…

A year-long case study was made of an elementary school teacher and her first and second grade students in a classroom considered typical of a learning community, an environment that emphasizes collaborative planning between teacher and students. Three aspects of planning were found directly related to this sort of collaboration. First, the…

What does educational research tell us about the effects of school desegregation? A review of past and present research studies provides no conclusive evidence about the effects of school desegregation, primarily because of the variance in type of methodology, time period of desegregation implementation, and type of desegregation plans evaluated.…

This paper defines alternative schools, exploring such critical parameters as their organizational context and structure, their curricular focus and pedagogical approach, and their governance. Also reviewed are some of the studies of experimental schools. Prior research is placed in the context of a critique which argues that more detailed…

This document contains chapters 4 and 5 of the final report of the Project on Social Architecture in Education. Chapter 4 provides a brief overview of the activities of the project in order to sketch the context out of which the case studies, conclusions, and learning materials emerged. Chapter 5 discusses and evaluates six major strands of…

A research project combining ethnographic and experimental methods is currently underway to assess whether minority groups use language in ways that put their children at a disadvantage in school. The project, which focuses on social, cognitive, and educational consequences of different patterns of language function and use, has involved…

Budgetmaking and bargaining are central resource allocation processes in schools; this study examines how they affect one another. Ethnoscientific techniques were applied in nine Illinois school systems. The results were analyzed to show the flow of the decision process and construction of detailed plans of action. The structure and power…

Claude Goldenberg's claim that there are compatibilities between minority children's home and school experiences is critiqued on the following points: (1) the methodology is not ethnographic; (2) home-school cultural compatibilities are not demonstrated; and (3) the model of literacy acquisition is not supported by current theory and research.…

Confronts a widespread prejudice about mathematical knowledge, that mathematics is "culture-free," by demonstrating alternative constructions of Euclidean geometrical ideas developed from the culture of Mozambique. As well as establishing the educational power of these constructions, the article illustrates the methodology of…

Working class immigrant youth are frequently more successful in school than nonimmigrant students of similar background if they receive all their schooling in their new homeland. This article explores the forces that allow the children of Punjabi Sikh farm families to succeed academically in spite of severe handicaps. (VM)