Children are faced with an increased potential for academic failure due to less stable family lives and career-oriented parents. Cross-cultural reading instruction practices and programs can provide insights that could prevent such failure for children at-risk. One such program is the reading maintenance program used in Denmark, wherein groups of…

Focusing on family interaction, this book discusses a study designed to develop systematic ways of looking at reading and writing as activities that have consequences in and are affected by family life. Topics of the seven chapters are as follows: the six families involved in the research, conservation and change in the transmission of family…

People classified as "cultural familial retarded" form a segment of the U.S. population that is easily overlooked by society, yet constitutes a growing problem. Individuals with this inherited form of mental retardation (estimated to number in excess of 5 million) are reared in a culturally inferior milieu and have a need for life-long social…

Many poor families in rural West Virginia live in unsafe, unsanitary structures that do not protect them from the elements, but these families are not considered officially homeless. Lincoln and Clay Counties are very rural, traditionally poor areas, with 45% of their populations receiving welfare and much larger proportions receiving food stamps.…

This collection of original papers, first published in the June and July, 1976 issues of Educational Technology Magazine, was prompted by the enormous public outcry which greeted the general public realization that achievement and college aptitude test scores were continuing in recent months and years the steady erosion which began in the…

The Home Environment Variable Questionnaire was given to guardians of 73 fifth grade students enrolled in bilingual-bicultural education programs in Espanola, New Mexico, for the purpose of identifying those home environment variables which predicted academic achievement. Grade Equivalent Scores from the Comprehensive Test of Basic Skills were…

Research treatments of home environment in studies of intellectual development and school performance are reviewed. The conceptualizations of home environment include variables specifying family status and deprivational conditions, child-rearing techniques, educational and intellectual process variables, and transactional experience. Psychological…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 30 titles deal with a variety of topics, including the following: (1) the effect of a series of lessons based on real life experiences for improving reading achievement; (2) reading achievement and the transition from letter to…

Experiences in prenatal life and early childhood that may cause personality disorders of criminal behavior in later life are examined in these proceedings of the Subcommittee on Childhood Experience as Causes of Criminal Behavior of the Standing Committee on Health, Welfare and Science. This issue, the thirteenth in a series of 19 hearings dating…

Based on the Walberg educational productivity model--which relates one quantifiable educational outcome to a range of inputs--a research project was undertaken to determine the impact of school desegregation on the academic achievement of third and sixth grade students in a Chicago suburb. A four-phase cooperative effort was instituted, involving…

The authors of this collection of essays make the major points that parental participation influences student performance, and that time spent with parents by school personnel results in better learning. Ira J. Gordon explains four models of parent-school-community relationships and cites research evidence of long-term effects of parent…

TO DETERMINE THE EFFECTS OF DESEGREGATION ON SCHOOL DISCIPLINE, PERSONAL INTERVIEWS WERE CONDUCTED WITH A LARGE NUMBER OF SCHOOL ADMINISTRATORS AND BOARD OFFICIALS, PARENTS, STUDENTS, AND COMMUNITY LAY LEADERS. IT WAS FOUND THAT DISCIPLINE PROBLEMS WERE CAUSED BY THE STUDENT'S INSECURITY AND RESENTMENT AT BEING WHAT THEY CONSIDERED "PAWNS" IN THE…

A STUDY OF ACHIEVEMENT-RELATED BEHAVIOR SOUGHT TO IDENTIFY PARENT BEHAVIOR AS A SOURCE OF VARIANCE WITHIN A HOMOGENEOUS GROUP OF CHILDREN. SUBJECTS WERE 72 SETS OF NEGRO PARENTS OF FIFTH-GRADE CHILDREN IN A PREDOMINANTLY LOWER-CLASS NEGRO SCHOOL. THE INTERACTIONS OF PARENTS AND CHILD AS THE YOUNGSTER SOLVED EIGHT TASKS WERE OBSERVED IN THE HOME BY…

Thirteen Negro mothers of preschool children who attended a day care program participated in a series o f six weekly meetings led by an educator and devoted to (1) discussion and demonstration o f ways the mothers could expand their children's learning skills and (2) discussion of aspects of the mother-child relationship. The reason for these…

In an attempt to explore the little-known world of children's play, and to open up channels of communication and understanding with children, the following are offered to teachers and teachers-in-training: (1) 11 topics for reading, discussion, and research (with bibliographical materials) on the playlore of children; (2) techniques for studying…