A factual account of a 10-minute conversation between a husband and wife about their daughter's application to college depicts marital problems. Closer examination reveals the tensions facing the middle class family and the significance to them of academic competition, higher education, comparative generational success, and social acceptance.…

Many parents work more hours outside of the home and their lives are crowded with more obligations than ever before; many children spend their evenings and weekends trying out for all-star teams, travelling to regional and national tournaments, and eating dinner in the car while being shuttled between activities. What explains the increase in…

According to Bernstein (A sociolinguistic approach to socialization; with some reference to educability, Basil Blackwell Ltd., 1972), middle-class parents transmit an elaborated code to their children that relies on verbal means, rather than paralinguistic devices or shared assumptions, to express meanings. Bernstein's ideas were used to argue…

This paper describes a research project that uses Pierre Bourdieu's concepts of habitus and cultural and social capital to penetrate how middle-class parents exercise influence and form positive relationships at the neighbourhood public school that serves various ethno-cultural groups of students. One group of white, economically privileged…

In order to understand how mothers develop their parenting styles under rapidly changing cultural contexts, this study examines and compares Korean upper-middle-class mothers' parental goals and real parenting practices as they reported. For this purpose, face-to-face in-depth interviews with 20 Korean mothers were conducted. By analyzing the…

Drawing on recent ethnographic research in one single-sex, private primary school, this paper will explore what it meant for the girls in this setting to embody the discourse of the "lady". The paper will propose that classed and gendered discourses of respectability featured strongly in the girls' lives, as they were expected to behave…

Examined effects of method variance on models linking family economic pressure, marital quality, and expressions of hostility and warmth among 76 couples. Observer reports yielded results linking economic pressure to marital quality indirectly through interactional processes such as hostility. Self-reports or spouses' reports made it difficult to…

Explored how contemporary middle-class African American grandmothers perceived themselves in relation to their children. Found moderate relationship between values of 100 grandchildren to 100 grandmothers, timing of role assumption, and current situational context. Values included expansion of self; morality or altruism; power, influence, or…

Helping prospective teachers develop the beliefs, knowledge, skills, attitudes, and practices necessary to meet the needs of diverse learners in the US is critical given that the teaching force remains overwhelmingly White, monolingual, and middle class and the student population is increasingly diverse. Teacher education programmes, in…

A growing number of South Korean students are going to an English-speaking country as teenagers to escape from the grueling, test-oriented Korean schools in hopes of gaining entry into American universities. American colleges and universities are starting to see more of these "early study abroad students," as they are called in South…

The literature is extensive about explanatory behavioral and social effects with an individual or micro focus. A somewhat less programmatic literature exits in social justice that considers systemic or macro factors: for example, mental health service and its structures that perpetuate inequity and disparity in service delivery. Social privilege…

This article describes some of the foundational social contracts about written texts that two-year-olds and their teachers were negotiating in a U.S. preschool writing center. Social contracts are shared cultural knowledge that individuals draw on to produce and use written texts in culturally appropriate ways. Participants in this study were 18…

This paper challenges Richard Pring's suggestion that parents using private education may be undermining the desire for social justice and equality, using recent arguments of Adam Swift as a springboard. Swift's position on the banning of private schools, which uses a Rawlsian "veil of ignorance" argument, is explored, and it is suggested that, if…

THIS ARTICLE DISCUSSES THE APPARENTLY UNBREACHABLE SOCIOECONOMIC GAP BETWEEN UPPER-MIDDLE-CLASS FAMILIES AND WELFARE FAMILIES WHO LIVE ON ONE BLOCK IN THE WEST SIDE OF MANHATTAN. IN THIS CONTEXT THE ARTICLE CHALLENGES THE MIDDLE-CLASS ORIENTATION OF THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS. THIS ARTICLE WAS PUBLISHED IN THE "PHI DELTA KAPPAN," VOLUME 45, NUMBER 2,…