Introducing preschool-age children to people of diverse ethnic/racial backgrounds and cultural practices is becoming one of the central features of early educational programming. This study used a pre-test post-test design with a control to assess such an educational intervention aimed at positively influencing American preschoolers' attitudes…

This volume contains 12 papers originally presented at the 14th Rutgers Invitational Symposium on Education in 1999. The symposium explored contemporary issues of ethnic, cultural, and national identities and their influence on the social construction of identity. Papers include: (1) "Reconceptualizing Ethnicity and Educational…

A case study of the practices of a white teacher working in an urban elementary school with a large majority of African American students shows the problems caused by detached and unreflective teaching practice. The study emerges from a joint ethnographic research and classroom-based educational project at the school. The teacher worked with…

A review of the social science literature traces the history of the construct of multiracial identity, 1890-1995. Research emphases have shifted from racial categorization to ethnicity, from behavioral observation to self-report, and from the inferiority or marginality of multiracial individuals to their phenomenological experiences. Contains 139…

Identifies relative deprivation as a subjective feeling of discontent based on a belief that one is getting less than one feels entitled to. Investigates the relationship between relative deprivation, ethnic identification, and racial attitudes in South Africa. Discusses the connections between these beliefs and recent sociopolitical changes. (MJP)

Discusses ways early childhood professionals can meet the identity needs of biracial children and their parents. Suggests school and class activity experiences to support biracial children. (BB)

Debate concerning "African-American" as a better racial/ethnic designator than "Black" has become a major public issue. While proponents of the term argue that it gives Blacks a land and culture to mark their identity and experience, others consider the question irrelevant to the solution of serious socioeconomic problems. (AF)

Explores the context of family beliefs and child-rearing practices with regard to how African American families, in a sample from a family-center project, prepare their children for success in school. Extended family and community supports, racial socialization, and family support are discussed. (SLD)

Examines supervision issues that may arise when ethnic minority members supervise members of an ethnic majority. Some topics include enhancing supervisees' respect for diversity, increasing cultural awareness of supervisors, the supervisor-supervisee relationship, communication styles, and models of supervision. Discusses possible solutions and…

Feminist scholars, especially those studying African-American women's history, must bring race into analyses of power more prominently, defining race, revealing it a metalanguage, and recognizing it as providing opportunities for exchange and context. Race must be acknowledged as an unstable, shifting, and strategic construction. (SLD)

The metaphor of walking in two worlds is frequently used to describe goals of education for indigenous groups in the United States. Five assumptions that lie behind this metaphor are examined critically. It is argued that this metaphor reduces the options available to Native Alaskans and American Indian students. (SLD)

Explores the impact of gender diversity on school achievement, using data from an ethnographic study of academic success among 33 eleventh-grade students in a Washington (DC) high school. The normalized definition of femaleness juxtaposed with a dominating patriarchy propels African-American females to resist images that assert their nothingness.…

Examines social constructs of white racial identity among adolescent girls attending a largely white, elite, private, single-sex high school. Students' voices illustrate how liberal discourses position youth and how white youth actively remake themselves in relation to prevailing meanings and practices institutionalized in private schools.…

This paper looks at some of the issues raised by Ogbu's work in relation to the education of different minority ethnic groups. Ogbu poses questions such as the value attached to education, its links to the future and its measurable outcomes in terms of "success" as experienced by black participants. The desire for better life chances…

This paper uses Black Feminist Thought to explain the lived experiences of three Black female graduate students at a White Research I institution. Through mentoring from Black female professors, the students received instrumental and psychosocial support that helped them to navigate through their graduate level work. Common themes of identity,…