This paper is one of a series on strategies for urban school improvement, which examines the interaction between pupil performance and family background. Instructional leadership, instructional emphasis, school climate, and teacher expectation are identified as factors which contribute to major differences in achievement levels among schools.…

Interviews with same-sex adult members of three-generation family lines can dramatize similarities and differences by age and generation in ways of thinking and feeling. An analysis of interviews with 157 families examined the health of the grandparent, the happiness of each of the three generational representatives, and family salience. Twelve…

Today, among adolescents, childbearing may precede rather than follow marriage. Evidence suggests that adolescent childbearers now rely heavily on their families to provide needed support. Among a sample of 320 adolescent, mostly black mothers from low-income families, most spent a majority of their early years of parenthood in an extended family…

Despite the fact that mobility or financial stability was clearly tied into the occupation and income of the father, an investigation of upwardly mobile black families in a mid-Atlantic metropolitan area indicates that this middle income group did not have to reject the reciprocal obligations of their extended kin networks in order to realize…

A sample was taken of 120 children in grades 1, 3, and 5 in two rural Newfoundland communities. To examine behaviors related to school success, the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (Revised), Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Abilities, and the Concept Assessment Test were administered to all subjects. In order to assess the correlation…

IN CALIFORNIA, THE MEXICAN-AMERICAN STUDENT IS TWO YEARS BEHIND THE NEGRO STUDENT AND THREE AND A HALF YEARS BEHIND THE ANGLO-AMERICAN IN SCHOLASTIC ACHIEVEMENT. SINCE HE REPRESENTS TWO DISTINCT AND OFTEN DIVERGENT CULTURES, ENGLISH-SPEAKING, MIDDLE-CLASS ORIENTED SCHOOLS MAKE ASSIMILATION VIRTUALLY IMPOSSIBLE. A HEAD START AND A FOLLOW THROUGH…

EFFECTIVE MEANS OF TEACHING SPANISH IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS OF DENVER, COLORADO, WERE STUDIED. EFFORTS WERE DIRECTED TOWARD DETERMINING THE KIND OF LEARNING AND LEARNING CONTEXT THAT WOULD MAKE FOR MAXIMUM LEARNING FROM INSTRUCTIONAL TELEVISION. PROJECT DURATION WAS FROM 1960 TO THE BEGINNING OF 1964. THE PURPOSE OF THE PROJECT WAS TO SYSTEMATICALLY…

Many psychological theories point to the importance of siblings in individual personality development. The impact of sibling status on interpersonal and achievement orientation was examined with undergraduates (N=1782) who completed a series of objective personality measures and a background questionnaire. Sibling status was defined in terms of…

Few counseling services are available to or utilized by rape victims, which implies that many women turn, instead, to their social networks for support. Research literature suggests that anxiety is reduced and coping skills are enhanced when a victim uses her interpersonal social network for support. Unfortunately, many women have the same…

To test whether parental behavior has an important impact on a child's behavior in later life, records describing home atmosphere during childhood were linked with records of subsequent criminality gathered when subjects were middle aged. Discriminant function analysis based on six variables describing home atmosphere was highly successful in…

Homework assignments are viewed as a kind of resource allocation which should be included in assessing a school's educational resources. Three questions are addressed in this study: average time allocations for student exposure to learning resources in class, through homework, and in total; extent of the variations in these averages; and…

A total of 734 sixth through twelfth grade students completed two questionnaires in a study that focused on the development of consumer skills, the sources of consumer skill acquisition, the effects of cognitive development and social factors on the socialization processes, and the effects of levels of competency on various consumer skills. A…

This study encompasses family influences on education and, particularly, values held by mothers toward the Head Start Program. In interviews, 200 Negro mothers indicated satisfaction with the educational experiences in Head Start, especially socialization of children. Interviewees felt that the mother role was important. They expressed the most…

This paper assumes that environmental inadequacy is the primary factor leading to progressive intellectual retardation and inability to cope in a complex society. An intervention project begun in 1966 was designed to develop cognitive, motivational, personal style, and physical variables, which are functional categories related to competence.…

The paucity of research concerning the role of family and church in rural Appalachia leads to a reliance on observations and parallels drawn from research in related areas of sociology. Highly structured family and church group relations in the Appalachian region often obstruct both the development of other inter-group relations and attempts to…