To determine whether teachers' dominative and integrative contacts with children are related to their assessments of children, four kindergarten teachers were observed for 300 minutes each. The Clifton form of the Anderson observational system was used to measure teacher contacts with individual children in their classes. Teachers were then asked…

This study hypothesized that low-income mothers employed as paraprofessional teachers may significantly change their verbal communication with their own school-age children. Two public schools in New York City provided the population for this study. The study was exploratory, planned as a vehicle to discover variables in the possible transfer of…

Poems, of a wide variety, which are carefully selected to serve as springboards for discussion for low ability, lower-middle-class high school students can aid in developing individual student taste and interest in poetry. Viewing poetic devices within specific poems (rather than as isolated phenomena), encouraging student attempts at writing…

To study maternal behaviors as related to social class differences, 30 middle class and 30 working class white mothers were observed at home on two separate days with their 10-month-old firstborn baby girls. Predesignated behaviors which occurred during 5-second intervals were recorded by an observer. Total observation time was 4 hours for each…

The author of this book summarizes his philosophy of teacher education in four chapters. The first chapter, "Some Problems of Teacher Education," discusses the difficulties teacher training institutions have in implementing their new ideas in the schools, and attributes the difficulty to the middle class values and clannishness of teachers, which…

Tested were certain measures of creativity and self concept in middle (M-group) and lower (L-group) social classes. It was hypothesized that: (1) L-group subjects (Ss) would have lower self concept than M-group Ss; (2) the greater the discrepancy between actual and ideal self, the greater possibility of low self concept; (3) L-group Ss would tend…

The NEA Task Force was instructed to "recommend to the Executive Committee a structure and program for the coordination and expansion of the human rights activities of the NEA and of the departments, divisions, commissions, and committees." Their recommendations and a discussion of the forces in American society that make them necessary comprise…

Recently much linguistic research has been amassed on black language. With rare exceptions, this linguistic research has been directed to the lower working-class members of the black community. The language of blacks who are not lower class, on the other hand, has been summarily ignored, resulting in the middle-class black protest against the…

Education as a lifelong process is not the same as schooling measured by years of attendance, the level of academic standards, and one's performance there. Schooling should provide the following functions, which comprise part of becoming educated: socialization, sorting, custody, knowledge and skills training, and encouragement of creativity and…

The quality of mother-child linguistic interaction was studied in 40 6-year-old English children and their mothers. Both the middle and working classes were represented in the sample. Tasks were administered in which children were to ask questions of their mothers. Questions were analyzed in terms of open versus closed. The majority of the…

Intellectual functioning of a lower class kindergarten class exposed to the introduction of a Piaget-oriented curriculum was compared with intellectual functioning of one comparison lower class and one comparison middle class group of children taught in a traditional, activity-centered kindergarten program. Change scores between the beginning and…

This study, designed to assess the effects of social class integration, tested the following hypothesis: Preschool age black children from middle class socioeconomic (SES) backgrounds will not be adversely affected by attending a daily program with a smaller group of black peers from lower SES backgrounds. A pre- and posttest battery administered…

Any theory of language acquisition must take into account the actual speech heard by children during the acquisition period. When 8 well-educated mothers were tape-recorded talking to their daughters, ages 16 to 30 months, it was found that their speech differed significantly from that spoken to another adult. The mothers used a more restricted…

Answers from questionnaires administered to middle-class freshman and junior students in 4 different rural and suburban high schools were used to assess predisposition to violence. The findings indicated a modest inverse relation between violence proclivity and age, with a sharp difference between boys and girls, reflecting our cultural norms.…

AS PART OF THE RESEARCH ON THE INFLUENCE OF RESPONSE-CONTINGENT REINFORCERS ON THE LEARNING AND PROBLEM-SOLVING BEHAVIOR OF CHILDREN, THE EFFECTS OF A LIMITED NUMBER OF VARIABLES ON THE PERFORMANCE OF CHILDREN OF THREE AGE LEVELS (4-5, 7-8, AND 10-11), SELECTED EQUALLY FROM MIDDLE- AND LOWER-CLASS BACKGROUNDS, WERE INVESTIGATED. THE EXPERIMENTAL…