Many universities today are promoting cultural diversity to prepare students to be competent in intercultural communication and function effectively in an increasingly global world. The purpose of this study is to explore how and why students from different cultural backgrounds are motivated to communicate and interact with each other. It is based…

This literature review has the goals of: (1) reviewing and summarizing the existing research literature on factors which influence the success of collaboration; and (2) reporting the results of the research literature review so that people who want to initiate or enhance a collaborative effort can benefit from the experience of others. The review…

This study examined the social competency of at-risk kindergarten students as they demonstrated the need to establish social communities in order to increase group motivation and peer learning. The study explores the patterns of behaviors that these children demonstrate in order to form social communities, explores the purpose behind their need to…

Directed toward the question of how parents and 15-year-old adolescents cope with the demands of social change occurring during unification in Germany, the comparative investigation of 40 families each in East and West Germany examines macro-social conditions of family relationships and rightist attitudes among German adolescents and adults. The…

Lincoln Accelerated School has participated in Missouri's Accelerated Schools Project since 1990. Grounded on a school-based management model, it seeks to modify the educational experiences of at-risk elementary students by enriching the curricular offerings and instructional strategies provided them. The school underwent a major stressor when the…

This book provides useful guidelines for implementing collaborative decision making in the public educational system. The prologue presents the historical background of educational reform in the United States and offers a rationale for radical school reform at the individual school level. The nine chapters that follow are divided into three parts.…

In the teacher education field, each school, college, department of education (SCDE), school district, education professor, and professional teacher organization operates as an unrelated entity. There is a lack of any coherent direction to the reforms that are currently under consideration, and an absence of a unified voice for or about teacher…

Cooperative learning is a teaching strategy that promotes the positive interaction of children in small, heterogeneous groups. Each group contain three or four students of varying achievement levels, backgrounds, socio-economic status, and sex. Cooperative learning processes promote student motivation, build group skills, foster social and…

The role of religious and secular rituals in the mediation of conflicting goals and the socialization of students into harmonious unity is analyzed in the context of a Catholic high school in the Midwest. Data were gathered by a participant-observer who attended classes and extracurricular activities, conducted formal interviews, and informally…

This handbook provides practical materials for public officials, professionals, and citizens who are implementing citizen participation programs in rural areas. Chapter 1 serves as an introduction to the process of designing and implementing participation programs. Chapter 2 discusses identifying citizen participation needs and necessary…

Three conclusions were drawn about within-class grouping after reviewing the work of several researchers on the following topics: teacher and student behavior, academic achievement, perceptions about reading groups, social class membership and reading group assignment, and the role of group cohesiveness. The conclusions were that: (1) although the…

Student affairs professionals have recognized the importance of physical environment to students' total development and have implemented strategies to enhance the territorial behavior of dormitory residents. However, little research has been done to assess the effectiveness of residence hall personalization programs which allow students to paint…

The history of European immigration to the United States and the roles that white ethnic groups have played in American industrialization, urbanization, and suburbanization are discussed in this paper. Focused on is the process by which major American cities grew and changed in terms of their ethnic composition. Fluctuations in the national…

Although family integration is a much-used concept in sociological research on the family, there has been no consistency in its definition or measurement. Numerous factors representing family integration have been combined to develop a measure, the Family Integration Index, designed to be a more valid and reliable measure of the multi-dimensional…