This final report describes a personalized kindergarten program which has three main features: (1) systematic observation of the individual learning needs of kindergarten children, (2) staff training to assist teachers in developing and using methods for personalizing their classroom programs, and (3) involvement of parents in implementing at-home…

The operation of several coal mines with vast proven reserves on the Navajo reservation is a manifestation of conflict between: a power hungry external world; the preservationist attitudes of traditional Navajo culture; the disadvantaged socio-economic status of the average Navajo wage earner; and the Navajo Nation's long term needs for internal…

What makes private or independent institutions is how they are governed. One of the virtues of private institutions is that their governance is independent or private. Private institutions serve a vital role in higher education in this country because they are a check and a balance to a sometimes overwhelming governmental presence in the…

One way that educationally disadvantaged children can be helped to succeed more often in schools is to ask their parents to join in an educational partnership with teachers for the benefit of their children. The acquisition of teaching skills allows the parents to focus their efforts. The use of positive verbal reinforcement was selected as the…

Program objectives were to develop children's abilities to deal with everyday and school related problems, and to make them more inner-directed by (1) developing a positive self-image, (2) increasing sensory and perceptual acuity, (3) improving language skills, and (4) improving problem-solving and concept formation abilities. Forty-five…

This report by the Schools Council Project in England examines questions and responses of children aged 8-16, and in particular, the role that curiosity and questions can play in learning. Chapter 1 compares comments of various government-sponsored reports. The second chapter reviews ideas and evidence about both curiosity and questions and the…

In order to provide services in a manner that will keep the attention and confidence of their consumers, new efforts must be made and ways found to involve the public in the decisions and operations of individual public education institutions. Some ways in which public education may generate more involvement by individual consumers are examined…

A research project attempted to discover whether residence in the Tremont Day Care Street Infant Center for 27 months had any significant effect on the cognitive, social and affective development of infants. Children entered this multilingual day care setting at 3 1/2 months and were from Chinese-speaking, Spanish-speaking, or English-speaking…

Previous studies have shown that American mothers, in contrast to Japanese, do more lively chatting to their babies, and that as a result, the American babies have a generally higher level of vocalization and, particularly, they respond with greater amounts of happy vocalization and gross motor activity than do Japanese babies. Thus, it appears…

Low achieving, low socioeconomic students, because of a multiplicity of little-understood background factors, seem to fail not because of an initial lack of motivation to learn, but because basic learning processes taught them by their own communities are not contiguous with those required for academic success. The study attempts to determine if…

Although the great heterogeneity of Afro-American culture makes the identification of unique culture traits extremely difficult, two cultural extremes may be discerned; most people fall somewhere between. Mainstream culture is best exemplified in the life style of middle class white America. Many Negroes strive to copy this life style in their…

To be defined by age as a pupil or student is to be made subject to a system that functions as a total institution, in a society that prides itself on choice and pluralism. What justifies this, in nearly every nation in the world is that fact that the school is accepted throughout the society as the gateway to opportunity; and individual…

In this essay, the author presents a rationale (and opportunities) for anthropologists to study the middle and upper end of the social power structure, as well as the lower. Anthropologists have much to contribute to an understanding of the processes whereby power and responsibility are exercised in this country; indeed there is a certain urgency…

This study examined the relationship between maternal employment status and the sex role concepts, cognitive development and adjustment of 110 nursery school children. It was predicted that maternal employment would be associated with a broadening of the children's sex role concepts. It was further predicted that there would be differential…

The schooling/learning process is a two-way street -- that is, teachers as well as students can learn important lessons about class values and acculturation. This study focuses upon that process where by middle-class teachers are significantly influenced by their lower-class students. The results dramatize two important changes--the acceptance of…