This cross-cultural study of social class and parent involvement in schools brings together data from Boston, Massachusetts, Liverpool, England, and Portugal. Interviews conducted with 350 teachers and low income parents sought to understand the nature and extent of the contacts between schools and families. The perspective was that children grow…

The future of America's students and teachers is a crucial challenge. Responding to this challenge, Massachusetts in 1985 enacted Chapter 188, the Public School Improvement Act, which establishes and implements a system for testing and evaluating school and student performance. Since Chapter 188 was implemented, Massachusetts schools have improved…

The soundness of the home-school relationship depends on mutual trust and understanding. This relationship is now at risk because schools have not adjusted to single-parent and step-families. Concern about the home-school relationship has increased over the last decade. However, accompanying the recent rise in non-nuclear families is a gap in…

The items in this book were drawn from a symposium intended to (1) recommend priorities in national educational policy relating to reading; (2) focus attention on the essential role of an active two-way, family-school partnership in encouraging reading as a lifetime habit; and (3) help various organizations concerned with literacy and reading…

A 1981-1982 study of the meaning of fundamental education concentrated on interviewing over 300 lay citizens, pastors, and educators in small rural communities in upstate New York and Vermont and yielded five major findings. First, little oversight or regulatory capability existed to control the fundamentalist school movement. State level…

A 2-year project was designed and implemented to improve attendance and academic achievement of targeted elementary (N=69) and secondary (N=78) school students. Teachers reported concerns about a high truancy rate and low grades among some students. The intervention provided for an individualized diagnostic-prescriptive approach in a humanistic…

Several ways in which the culture of the home in a traditional society differs from the culture of the school, as well as obstacles to efforts to coordinate school and home, are identified prior to a discussion of the educational function of the home and functions of the school. It is pointed out that, whereas in traditional societies education…

Two brief papers, outlines, worksheets, and surveys for creating a democratic school environment and furthering citizenship education in grades K-12 are presented. The first paper emphasizes the need for and the role of citizenship education in the school. The second paper discusses the influence of the formal, hidden, and societal curricula on…

This colloquium draws on recent cross-cultural research undertaken in Brunei exploring the transition of the child from home or nursery school to preschool, which is mandatory for all children in their fifth year. Preschool classes are a part of primary schools in the Bruneian education system and are administered by the Ministry of Education.…

Attempts to explain poor academic performance of Mexican American bilingual students have relied primarily on two causative models: home and school. Both models were evaluated with data from a matched sample of public school bilingual Mexican American children from grades 1-8, in a medium sized South-Central Texas community. The control group…

Recently American schools have attempted to provide more family-oriented services. As school psychologists expand their roles to include home-school consultation in the treatment of students' educational and psychological problems, they must understand the legislation related to various policy issues in public schools. School psychologists must be…

This annotated bibliography focuses on the ecological approach to the study of human development and on the relationship of this approach to an ecological theory of teaching. Topics covered include: (1) the ecological approach to the study of human development; (2) the impact of teacher characteristics on education and teaching; (3) the…

The current conflict among opposing sets of cultural ideals is illustrated by several interrelated conditions. The conservative phenomenon is more complex than the traditional liberal-conservative dichotomy would suggest. Changes in societal conditions invite a reexamination of basic assumptions across the broad spectrum of political ideology.…

A study was conducted to determine who has the responsibility for teaching general occupational and consumer competencies--the home, the school, or the workplace. To answer this question, two national surveys on functional competencies in occupational adaptability and consumer economics were conducted. Competencies were first identified and then…

This model proposes a Montessori schooling approach for the children of alcoholics because this approach helps the child develop his self-esteem and concentration; acquire a sense of order, mastery and control over his environment; and separate fact from fantasy. The model assumes that alcoholic parents, responding to the dehabilitative effects of…