Childhood obesity is increasingly prevalent in Western and non-Western societies. The authors related multiple dimensions of physical self-concept to body composition for 763 Chinese children aged 8 to 15 and compared the results with Western research. Compared with Western research, gender differences favoring boys were generally much smaller for…

Linda Scott DeRosier's autobiographical accounts of literacy attainment in "Creeker: A Woman's Journey" and "Songs of Life and Grace" reveal that entrance into a secondary discourse community via literacy can bring both pleasure and pain. Analyzing the identity negotiations DeRosier encounters reveals that although she…

This article draws on an investigation into the extent to which teachers in one international school in Thailand had been trained for teaching in culturally diverse classrooms. It focuses on these teachers' initial and subsequent training, and probes how culturally responsive these teachers believed themselves to be. The article also considers how…

Research examining family influences on student motivation and achievement in school has generally focused on parental influences and has often been limited to one or two variables (e.g., parental expectations or aspirations, parental involvement in schoolwork). In the present study we interviewed high school seniors to examine whether and how…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate how race and race relations influence school leadership practice. Design/methodology/approach: This ethnographic study was conducted in a high-poverty, high-minority, urban high school in the Southeastern USA. The authors utilized an anthropological conceptual framework called a moiety, through…

This author introduces a framework to guide researchers into a process of racial and cultural awareness, consciousness, and positionality as they conduct education research. The premise of the argument is that dangers seen, unseen, and unforeseen can emerge for researchers when they do not pay careful attention to their own and others' racialized…

The attribution of low literacy levels among Gypsy children to difficulties of access to schools neglects underlying sociocultural explanations. There has been little analysis in reports/studies of Gypsy attitudes toward literacy, nor of outcomes of acquisition. Informed by new literacy theory and by the discourse of previous ethnographic studies,…

Using a national sample (n = 643) of Native American students who took the College Student Experiences Questionnaire (CSEQ), the researcher identified how student involvement and institutional commitment to diversity predicted student learning. Native American students reported higher levels of learning when the institution's commitment to…

Attitudes to science scales developed in England have been used in a rural region of South Africa with children aged 10 and 11 years in a two-stage data collection investigation. Cultural constraints on the use of "foreign" scales are explored. Factor analyses reveal differences between the South African and English children. A South…

Dutch child care can be described as organized provision with care, guidance and additional education for children from 0-16 years old, by other people than parents or guardians in a way that is adapted to the space of twenty-four hours and the age of children and to the needs of parents or guardians. Child care in the Netherlands is characterized…

This article draws on a two-year study funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) of South Asian parents and their children's views on the school experience (Parents, Children and the School Experience: Asian Families' Perspectives--Grant Reference: R000239671). The article focuses on an aspect of the young people's school…

We explore the roots of tolerance for immigration-related diversity from a political socialization perspective. Among rural adolescent respondents, we find that attitudes toward immigrants are surprisingly variable along a number of important dimensions: anticipated socioeconomic status, family longevity in the community, and employment in…

A study examined foreign students from one cultural background, Malaysia, in the American basic speech class to discover which areas they find most difficult and to discover those norms and values that cause these difficulties. Malaysian students were chosen as the focus of the study because Asian students comprise more than half of the total…

Multiculturalism has a place in basic communication courses. At a personal level, cross-cultural communication is concerned with the way a person chooses to treat another--it is a question of communication ethics, a subject that should be introduced in any basic communication course because communicators must consider how to deal fairly and…

The Urban Education Project at Research for Better Schools has developed a conceptual framework, the Urban Learner Framework (ULF) that focuses on the central role of meaningful instruction that values the experiences and backgrounds of the learners. This new view of the urban learner presents them as capable, motivated, and resilient learners who…