This book details a 3-year study in which lower-middle to middle class, white, black, and Latina middle school and high school girls were interviewed about their feelings concerning appearance, their eating habits, and dieting. The findings, based on what the girls reported, are explored and give insight into the influence of peers, family, and…

This book provides a summary of past and cutting-edge research on the acquisition of language by young children. It lends support to the behavioralist paradigm of language acquisition, namely, that maternal rewards and corrections should be integrated with perceptual, cognitive, and social learning conceptualizations in a skill-learning approach…

This report summarizes findings from three studies of college teachers' and students' attitudes toward and experiences with racial and ethnic diversity, which are based on surveys of faculty at leading U.S. research universities; a survey of faculty at Macalester College (Minnesota); and a case study of three interactive, multiracial/multiethnic…

This digest discusses the challenges facing first-generation students, and offers strategies for helping them to transfer to four-year institutions. A first-generation community college student attends a community college, and his or her parents have not obtained a college degree. Large waves of immigration have affected community colleges; many…

Multicultural perspectives on assessment challenge traditional perspectives by advancing an additional source of variation in test responses that is presumed to escape test developers and test users. Increasing and convergent evidence from multiple sources indicates the following types of ethnocentric errors in test development, administration,…

This digest describes ways in which professionals who work with students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds can create an educational climate that accepts and respects the language and culture of its students and empowers them to feel confident enough to risk getting involved in the learning process. Methods of creating such an…

Teachers in a multicultural society need to respect cultural differences, know the cultural resources their students bring to class, and be skilled at tapping into learners' cultural resources in the teaching-learning process. They must believe that all students are capable of learning, and they must implement an enriched curriculum for all…

This study is an extension of an on-going longitudinal study, the Girls Engagement With/In Science (GEIS) Project. The GEIS Project was designed to understand how girls who are poor, minority or both, engage in science. The two teachers who form the focus for this study are these girls' 7th and 8th grade teachers. Data for this interpretive…

This book provides teachers with information about the educational needs of Cambodian, Chinese, Filipino, Hmong, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese-American children in U.S. public schools. For each group, there are two chapters: one sociocultural and one linguistic. Each documents the unique characteristics of each ethnic group and provides…

Few preservice and beginning teachers are prepared for the diversity of today's classrooms. Educators must be aware of the many ways in which people are diverse and recognize that diversity is an enormous advantage. By 2010, 40 percent of students will be minorities. U.S. teachers are predominantly middle-class European Americans, yet one in four…

A study examined the labeling practices in the multicultural discourse in two adult education settings in Sweden: a day folk high school and a municipal adult education center. A total of 33 students and 9 staff members from two adult education programs were interviewed. The labeling processes used by the "actors" (the adult learners and…

This study examined the perceptions of preservice teachers tutoring non-native English speakers in a local public school. A group of 14 predominantly female preservice teachers participated, nine white and five Hispanic. Participants completed interviews asking about their tutoring experiences. Results found two common themes: most participants…

Examined 30 Japanese and 30 American preschoolers' responses to hypothetical interpersonal dilemmas as a function of culture, gender, and maternal child rearing values. Found that American children showed more anger, more aggressive behavior and language, and underregulation of emotion than Japanese children. Children from both cultures appeared…

Presents a peer training model illustrating how a campus can involve its students, faculty, and administrators in effective prejudice-reducing strategies. Presents the operational assumptions governing the National Coalition-Building Institute's training programs, the theory and methodology of its prejudice reduction model, and a process for…

Twenty-three undergraduate social work students from Eastern Michigan University completed a seven-week internship in a geriatric unit at a Mexico City hospital. Analyzes stages that students went through as they began to realize the importance of cultural context and to understand cultural differences in human behavior and service provision.…