Policy modifications by postsecondary, business, and banking institutions are suggested to make small loans readily available to adult learners for higher education. The author focuses on middle-income adult students with an interest in career mobility in examining existing student loan programs, deferred tuition plans, and adult repayment rates.…

Presents an observational checklist for determining giftedness, based on ten categories of behavior; suggests a model for identification of dominant cultural and subdominant cultural gifted that emphasizes positive performance criteria. (MKM)

Achievement and locus of control data were gathered the first week of first grade, and seven months later, for middle- and lower-socioeconomic status (SES) children. While middle-SES children experienced greater achievement gains, lower-SES students increased in internal control. Results suggested that internal control contributed to achievement.…

Information collected through firsthand observations, interviews, and questionnaires from such sources as administrators, teachers, students, board members, and other community members is the base of a study of the relationship between school and community in a rural setting. (Author/MLF)

Investigates the relationship between widespread childhood poverty and the effect of deep parental rootedness in nonaffluence, focusing on middle-class Blacks. As a group, disproportionate numbers of them have experienced poverty. Results indicate attitudinal and behavioral legacies of poverty and suggest interclass similarities in the Black…

Examines background factors of nineteenth-century education, especially the development of systematic training for elementary school mistresses, and social class. Concentrates on Whitelands College's recruitment of future teachers with reference to their social class. (NH)

Analyzes oral narrative told to peers by a Black girl and compares it to one told to an adult female by a White middle-class girl. Proposes that the White girl's style is compatible with school-based values governing speech and writing, while the Black girl's style is compatible with cultures emphasizing verbal mastery but is not compatible with…

Examined the performance of kindergartners from middle- and low-income families on arithmetic calculations presented in a nonverbal format and in three verbal formats. Children from middle-income families performed better than those from low-income families on verbal calculation tasks but not on the nonverbal task. (BC)

A study of 53 8- to 10-year-old children from African-American and white working- to middle-class families in Chattanooga (Tennessee) supports the hypothesis that, compared to white children, African-American children are less stereotyped in their responses to African-American and white infants. Gender differences are evident for Whites but not…

Believes that with the turn of the millennium, the United States should undergo a self-examination of the state of democracy in the country. Addresses various concerns in relation to societal reform movements and idealism, the country's performance on the world stage, inequalities still prevalent in society, and the call for social justice. (CMK)

The family--via communication (or lack thereof)--is a primary avenue for sexuality education. While most research on family sexuality communication has examined the content of parent-child communication (e.g. topics discussed), relatively few studies have assessed the process, the way in which communication occurs. This paper presents an analysis…

In this paper we examine the discursive resources that year 4 and year 8 students draw on to construct meanings for health. Drawing on students' responses to tasks in the New Zealand National Monitoring Project (Crooks & Flockton, "Health & Physical Education", University of Otago Educational Assessment Research Unit, 1999) we…

The last eight years have created radical realignments in Australia's political landscape. The Prime Minister's bitterest enemies are precisely the same people who would once have been Australian Liberalism's stalwarts. The author writes on the legacy of Australia's culture wars. For responses, see EJ848173: "Aussie Battler, or Worldly…

This study examined the idea that toddlers in some communities are accorded a privileged status in which they are allowed what they want, assumed not yet to "understand" how to cooperate. U.S. middle-class and Guatemalan Mayan mothers and 3- to 5-year-old siblings were observed while the siblings and toddlers (14-20 months) both sought…

Timetables for adolescents' behavioural autonomy were examined using a modified version of Feldman and Quatman's (1988) teen timetable measure with 73 middle-class African American middle adolescents (M age = 14.96 years, SD = 1.29) and their parents (73 mothers and 44 fathers), who were followed longitudinally for 3 years. African American…