There is a growing concern in this country that the middle class is disappearing and not in the way one would hope. Instead of families moving into a higher socio-economic class and being able to provide richer life experiences for themselves and their children, vast numbers are shifting to a lower socio-economic status level. The gap between the…

Recent research on advanced theory of mind (ToM) has questioned the extent to which existing ToM measures capture a single construct, particularly for groups understudied in developmental research. The present study examined the factor structure of one of the most commonly used advanced ToM measures, the Strange Stories task, in samples of low-…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore individual enrolment trajectories to fully understand the actual disparity in secondary education enrolment statuses among the different socio-economic status (SES) groups in a newly emerged nation, Myanmar. Design/methodology/approach: The differences in enrolment statuses among various SES groups…

Extensive research has explored the ability of young children to learn about the causal structure of the world from patterns of evidence. These studies, however, have been conducted with middle-class samples from North America and Europe. In the present study, low-income Peruvian 4- and 5-year-olds and adults, low-income U.S. 4- and 5-year-olds in…

There has been a rapid global expansion of English instruction in the early grades in public school curricula. Particularly in so-called developing countries, the increase of and its shift from exclusively private to public education is linked to the idea that acquiring English promotes personal, social, and economic development. The author takes…

This paper analyses the provision of education in Argentina in systemic terms. Using the concept of quasi-monopoly and the notions of exit, voice and loyalty, we study the logic of organization and distribution of students within the educational system. We support the idea that the provision of private and public education makes a coherent whole,…

Grouping students by "ability" is a topic of long-standing contention in English education policy, research and practice. While policy-makers have frequently advocated the practice as reflecting educational "standards", research has consistently failed to find significant benefits of "ability" grouping; and indeed has…

Many universities are pursuing increases in on-line course offerings as a means of offsetting the rising costs of providing high-quality educational opportunities and of better serving their student populations. However, enrollments in online courses are not always sufficient to cover their costs. One possible way of improving enrollments is…

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…

Examines the thesis that ideological beliefs about the poor and about poverty policy are in large measure a function of economic self-interest; the study is based on interviews with 300 white women in the Boston SMSA, representing three income levels. (Author/JM)

Responses of university administrative support workers (n=292) showed that job and workplace characteristics are important predictors of class identity for women. Although greater use of video display terminals is linked with working-class identity, workers form a more middle-class identity the longer an office has been automated. (SK)

High and low SES mothers of one- and three-year-old children (N=104) were interviewed. Results showed that low SES mothers believed that infants acquire basic cognitive skills later and that the introduction of cognitively stimulating activities should occur later than did high SES mothers. (JMB)

The Stanford Preschool Internal-External Scale (SPIES) was administered to middle class kindergarten children to investigate whether the characteristics of the test would remain stable as it did for the normative sample. (Author/DEP)

Constructive memory in low socioeconomic status (SES) Black and middle-SES White children was evaluated. The fourth-grade subjects in the study were tested by a recognition procedure. Results indicated that the nature of test instructions given to subjects can alter estimates of population differences in inference retention. (DWH)

In order to investigate meaningful differences between the blue-collar and the white-collar segments of the Negro community, an area probability sample stratified by occupation from the Chatham community area of Chicago was used; eighty Negro males were interviewed. (JM)