Describes a study designed to differentiate between universal and culturally specific aspects of children's biological understanding. A group of 363 kindergartners, second graders, and fourth graders from Israel, Japan, and the United States matched 16 attributes to people, animals, plants, and inanimate objects. Results revealed how cultural…

A survey of 136 mental health providers revealed that providers overwhelmingly perceive cultural issues as important in evaluations of Hispanic children and adolescents. Only 54% considered themselves as highly successful in assessing degree of acculturation, and 69% reported a great need for more culturally focused training. (Author/KS)

Claims that multicultural education is based on unsound conceptions of the nature of culture, particularly the idea that it is inappropriate to judge cultures by the standard of how well they allow members to adapt to their current circumstances. Multiculturalism should encourage maximum interaction of all societal elements to forge an emergent…

As part of an experiential education program, students from Keuka College (New York) traveled to Costa Rica to participate in a service project and to learn about the country's political, socioeconomic, and ecological conditions. Pretrip preparation included studying experiential learning models that emphasized experience, reflection, abstract…

Discusses the increasingly multicultural nature of California's population. Questions whether multiculturalism can be incorporated into Christian education. Provides a checklist of multicultural religious education programs divided into knowledge, skill, and attitude components. (CFR)

Principal factor analysis and promax rotations were performed on Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) scores of 2,339 clinically referred Dutch children. Dutch syndromes were very similar to the CBCL cross-informant syndromes derived by T. M. Aschenbach (1991), supporting the cross-cultural generalizability of the CBCL cross-informant syndromes. (SLD)

School efforts to promote science learning were examined at two ethnically and linguistically diverse elementary schools (one urban and one suburban). The schools differed considerably with regard to students' prior knowledge and background, teacher and administrator attitudes toward science education and toward the capabilities of students with…

Suggests that the school reform movement related to the World-Class Schools initiative is not beneficial for selected students. Coupling this initiative with the Goals 2000 standards will only increase the chasm between the have and the have-not students. School-linked student support services will be needed for the have-nots. (SLD)

Differential tendencies to avoid guessing on the Psychometric Entrance Test (the Israeli college entrance examination) were studied as a function of language group, gender, and examination date for over 10,000 students. Students with different cultural backgrounds and genders differed in their tendencies to guess. Implications for test results are…

Because of increased aid to developing nations, cross-cultural evaluation has become more common. Whether culture has an influence on evaluation was studied by simulating a study of Mexican and U.S. agricultural administrators. Results demonstrate the effects of cultural differences on evaluation. (SLD)

Progress can be made toward equity through the development of understanding of diverse cultures that make up our communities and making a commitment to work toward more equitable educational practices based on cultural understandings. Ways to learn about diversity and to educate about the schools are suggested. (SLD)

Discusses why a broad and pluralistic conception of culture and cultural group will work to the advantage of multicultural teacher educators, particularly those who make use of some form of ethnic and cultural self-disclosure in their courses. The essay examines ethnic and cultural self-disclosure and provides examples of its use in the author's…

Two exploratory studies suggest ways to address Hispanic Americans' education needs. School staff should place value on the students' language and cultures, set high expectations for language-minority students, design staff development to help teachers and counselors serve language-minority students more effectively, and encourage parents to…

Camp Adventure is an international youth organization that trains college students to work as camp counselors at camps on U.S. military bases. Diary excerpts from four camp counselors (three who worked in Panama and one in the United States) reveal how they adapted to diversity in people, locales, and cultures. (LP)

Successful counseling is possible if health care providers learn to interpret behaviors within cultural context. The paper describes a culture-centered approach, using a grid that matches same/different behaviors and expectations. Culturally accurate knowledge and skills provide a developmental sequence for more appropriate health-care guidance in…