Examined the use of the Ages and Stages Questionnaires with 96 low- and middle-income parents on their child from 4 to 30 months. Found that percent agreement between a professionally-administered standardized assessment and questionnaires completed by low and middle-income parents was 80% to 91% and 85% to 93%, respectively. (Author/KB)

Examined the attitudes of Hong Kong secondary school students toward English, Cantonese, and Putonghua. Compared the language attitudes of two main groups of Hong Kong students, middle class elite and working class low achievers. Findings showed that the former group was more inclined to use English while the latter group was more inclined to use…

Philip Woods and Carl Bagley's "School Choice and Competition" (Routledge 1998) evaluates the viability of allowing parents to choose the school their children attend within a decentralized, market environment. Despite methodological shortcomings, the authors argue effectively for schools' resistance to "competitive" social…

Explains that in order to write a book on the Progressive Era that can compete with the plethora of books already on this topic, the author combined two common strategies used when approaching his book: (1) examining the politics of the period; and (2) analyzing the people and their experiences with social change. (CMK)

Contemporary White cultural bias is a complex social pattering and possessiveness rooted in unchallenged assumptions and privileged status arising from historic and structural racism, classism, sexism, and suburbanism. A church school curriculum that reflects only the experience, language, and culture of writers, editors, and illustrators raised…

Market reform, financial decentralization, and economic globalization have greatly accentuated China's social and regional inequalities. Education is expected to address these inequalities in a context of rapid social change, including the rise of an urban middle class, changed status of women, resurgence of ethnic identities, growing rural to…

The ideal of the proper family mealtime, originally devised by the Victorian middle class, gained cultural hegemony in modern America, but with the partial exception of the 1950s, only a minority of American families could ever live by it.

This paper outlines the main substantive findings from the latest stage of a research programme which began in 1982. The most recent project was designed to provide an interim snapshot through a questionnaire survey of the progress of a group of young men and women whom we have been following since the start of their secondary education when they…

This book presents a biographical account of the life of Alice Freeman Palmer (1855-1902) who is credited with expanding academic horizons for women in the United States during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It tells of the obstacles she confronted as she chose both marriage and a professional career as well as illuminates this…

This two-part investigation attempted to formulate culturally sensitive definitions of desirable and undesirable attachment behavior. Participants were 3 sociocultural groups of 16 mothers each: middle-class Anglo mothers, lower-class Anglo mothers, and lower-class Puerto Rican mothers living on the U.S. mainland. All mothers had at least 1 child…

Since the 1950s, parenting and childhood in America have changed dramatically. Childhood as a period in which to grow at one's own pace in a protected environment largely removed from adult supervision has given way to a new era in which the parent acts as supervisor and director of the child's development. Such involvement, especially by middle…

This research report summarizes data on six new immigrant groups, Colombians, Italians, Greeks, Koreans, Asian Indians, and Israelis, living in the Borough of Queens in New York City. The research format consisted of a comprehensive interview administered to 116 households. Data on occupation, education, income, household composition,…

A study explored whether children from lower class families would approach early writing with less confidence than children from other social classes. Subjects, 233 kindergarten children in all, represented four public elementary schools in very different settings: (1) an all-black low income neighborhood in the central city; (2) a white middle…

The history of federal student financial aid legislation, 1965-1985, is traced, and problems faced in the mid-1980s, and possible future directions are considered. The Higher Education Act of 1965 was the first explicit federal commitment to equalizing college opportunities for needy students through grants and programs such as Talent Search. Some…

It has generally been assumed that lower socioeconomic status teenage parents are atypical in their expectations about child development compared to other parental groups. However there is little information available concerning the expectations of middle class parents. Middle class nonparent teenagers (N=50) and two parental groups (participants…