A study sought to identify elements of the household economy, family structure, and parenting practices that help explain the aversion many Hispanic-American parents feel toward organized preschools. Data were drawn from a 1991 national survey of families with young children conducted by the National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES) and…

This study sought to understand how children develop their gender identities by examining their social interactions in a school setting. It followed six children over the course of the school year at a university-run laboratory preschool, utilizing videotaped observations, field notes, and teacher interviews. Four of the targeted children's gender…

This ethnographic study examined two bilingual, ethnic-minority children in a developmentally appropriate kindergarten to discover how they worked and played in learning centers. A Vietnamese-Cambodian-American girl and an Indian-American boy were observed two to three times per week throughout the school year. The two children's interactions with…

An ethnographic study was conducted with the goal of comparing the botanical knowledge of nine sixth grade students with the botanical concepts developed in the elementary textbook series, Science, by Silver Burdett, 1985. The extent to which the child's conceptual framework resembles that of the scientist and the extent to which the textbook…

The Health Academy and the Media Academy, two innovative high school intervention programs for at-risk youth in Oakland (California), are examined. A collaborative effort of the school district, business, and community, the academies are school-within-a-school programs that engage about 120 at-risk students each in specific academic curricula for…

This report summarizes the Assessment of Language Proficiency of Bilingual Persons (ALPBP) project research component and provides a summary of the findings of the other six components of the study. The summary of the research component includes an outline of the goals, activities, and requests for proposals. After the introduction, the following…

This final report summarizes two years of research carried out by the Indigenous Mathematics Project at five community schools in Papua New Guinea. The first section gives a brief overview of the study, including a summary of the important results, overall conclusions, and recommendations. It is written using non-technical terms whenever possible,…

Black underrepresentation in college enrollment and degree attainment can be seen as symptomatic of broad societal structures that have perpetuated inequality of socioeconomic and educational opportunity. This study examines a low-income black neighborhood to discover the extent to which blacks think of themselves as members of a subordinate caste…

This report briefly describes the Marin City, California community and summarizes progress made by the Far West Laboratory's Western Regional Laboratory in the development of a long-range community intervention program. Marin City is a predominantly low-income, black community in which 30 percent of households, mainly those headed by single women,…

This report re-examines previously gathered ethnographic data derived from approximately 3,000 hours of interviews with migrants across the United States to determine what factors associated with migration affect children's educational outcomes. The data suggest the existence of a "culture of migrancy," which is manifested in similar…

The case study of the use of a classroom observation technique to evaluate the abilities and performance of a bilingual kindergarten student previously assessed as a low achiever is described. There are three objectives: to show the validity of the ethnographic monitoring technique, to show the value of teachers as collaborating researchers, and…

This report compares the findings of a recent ethnographic study of a multiethnic urban high school to some of the highlights of a series of ten-year-old ethnographic studies on court-ordered desegregated school settings. The study of the multiethnic urban school employed an ethnographic design whereby a participant-observer interviewed students…

Results of an ethnographic study indicate that one elementary school teacher's management plan reflects interaction between teaching goals, strategies which are hierarchically arranged, and the selection criteria she considers relevant. Selection criteria include teacher beliefs about the student's personality, the student's level of required…

The cross-cultural validity of many models of personality development has been challenged because of their emphasis on Western ideals of individuation, setting goals for oneself, and aggressively pursuing those goals. The model of Hindu society presented in this paper is different. Case studies of two individuals who sought psychological help are…

This project report examines strategies for effective school desegregation based on case studies of individual schools, national school surveys, ethnographic studies of classrooms, trend analyses, opinion surveys and conference interviews, and court documents. The strategies identified in the report include the attainment of one or more of the…