Children's Transition Into Full-Time Schooling: Black/White Comparisons

The transition from "home child" to "school child" is an important social milestone and encompasses a life period that has not received as much attention as it may deserve. Poor black children, who are those with the most social interaction disabilities, seem particularly vulnerable in the early part of this transition. A further complication is that "summer learning" helps mainly well-off children, and blacks in the population-at-large are less likely to be well off than whites. Although schools do seem to be making up for the dearth of academic socialization resources in many young children's households, and in this sense are most beneficial for those who need them most, more work is needed on why schools are not filling the bill as well for the neediest blacks as they are for the neediest whites.     

Diversity in Children's Literature: Not Just a Black and White Issue

Diverse characters in children's literature have been used for many years to introduce children to a variety of cultures and ethnic peoples. Using characters in literature is also a strategy that is available to educators who wish to introduce children in a classroom to their peers who have disabilities. The article explores both how books can be analyzed and what educators should look for if they are using books that contain characters with disabilities.     

Lone Mothers' Involvement in their Children's Schooling: Towards a new typology of maternal involvement

Parental involvement in schooling is currently advocated by both education policy and theorists in the UK as a solution to 'falling' educational standards. However, this parental involvement is presented as ungendered, with no recognition that the work required of mothers by schools is difficult to do under conditions of sole supporting mothering and low income. This article offers a way of conceptualising lone mothers' understandings of their involvement in their children's schooling by deconstructing the standard educationlist and school-based typologies of parental involvement and constructing a (new) typology of maternal involvement based in lone mothers' understandings. In doing this, the article explores the hidden assumptions about class, 'race', gender and family form behind the parental involvement discourse.     

Science on the Fairgrounds: From Black to White Magic

During the 18th and 19th centuries, numerous “entrepreneurs de spectacles scientifiques” — a new category of “stall-keepers” — travelled around France, displaying their scientific shows to the public. They turned out to be physics demonstrators, magicians, mechanical engineers or curators of museums of anatomy. A general survey of these shows is not easy because we have but few documents to consider. Through a various set of texts and pictures, we’ll try to understand the general philosophy of these shows: the wonder, the novelty and the surprising are the key-ideas which prevail and not only the idea that these shows mostly deliver knowledge. But above all, we will see that these shows played an important part in popularizing the 19th century scientific achievement as well as achieving the 18th century goal of the Enlightenment. Finally, we may question and discuss the 21st century answer to the question of science understood as entertainment: “science’tainment” as we say: “info’tainment”!     

Basil Bernstein's Theory of the Pedagogic Device and Formal Music Schooling: Putting the Theory Into Practice

This article describes Basil Bernstein's theory of the pedagogic device as applied to school music instruction. Showing that educational practices are not personal choices alone, but the result of socio-political mandates, the article traces how education functions as a vehicle for social reproduction. Bernstein called this process the recontextualization of knowledge: From its point of inception, originally conceived knowledge undergoes changes through selection and filtration processes, eventually becoming curriculum—a relay for certain social and cultural values. Gaps in the recontextualization process allow teachers to place their own individual stamp upon the learning and teaching that occur in their classroom. Teacher–pupil interactions, guided by school-internal processes, lead to school knowledge that is further reproduced by the pupils in particular ways. A teacher's awareness of socially conditioned and habitual patterns of preference and behavior (habitus) may be key to making socially inclusive and emancipatory instructional choices.     

The barriers to achievement for White/Black Caribbean pupils in English schools

Pupils of White and Black Caribbean descent make up the largest category of mixed heritage pupils in the United Kingdom. As a group they are at risk of underachieving and are proportionally over‐represented in school exclusions. Yet little is known to date about the barriers to their achievement. The common‐sense explanation for their underachievement is often in relation to the perception that mixed‐heritage people are more likely to have ‘identity problems’ and low self‐esteem because of their mixed backgrounds. In some cases, this view is further compounded by low teacher expectations associated with the socio‐economic background and household structure of some mixed heritage pupils. By drawing on qualitative data from recent research, ¹ 1. See Tikly et al. (2004 Tikly, L., Caballero, C., Haynes, J. and Hill, J. 2004. Understanding the educational needs of mixed heritage pupils, London: DfES.  [Google Scholar]). View all notes this article will explore the barriers to achievement faced by White/Black Caribbean pupils in English schools. We argue that although White/Black Caribbean pupils are likely to experience a similar set of barriers to achievement as Black Caribbean pupils, there are important distinctions to be made. The specific barriers to achievement identified for White/Black Caribbean pupils derive from socio‐economic disadvantage, low teacher expectation linked to misunderstandings of mixed heritage identities and backgrounds, and the behavioural issues and attitudes towards achievement linked to peer group pressures.     

Education and Colonial Transition in Singapore and Hong Kong: Comparisons and contrasts

As Hong Kong approached its hand-over to Chinese sovereignty, it has been instructive to compare its experience with that in other former British colonies. This article focuses on how education policies in areas such as the medium of instruction and curriculum changed as Singapore moved towards self-government and independence in the 1950s and 1960s. It also compares the changes that took place in Singapore with those currently occurring in Hong Kong. Observations will be made about the likelihood of the 'one country, two systems' concept working in Hong Kong after 1997.     

Children's Emotionality Moderates the Association Between Maternal Responsiveness and Allostatic Load: Investigation Into Differential Susceptibility

While emotionality is often thought of as a risk factor, differential susceptibility theory argues that emotionality reflects susceptibility to both positive and negative environmental influences. The present study explored whether emotional children might be more susceptible to the effects of both high and low maternal responsiveness on allostatic load, a physiological indicator of chronic stress. Participants were 226 mother and child dyads. Mothers reported on children's emotionality at child age 9. Maternal responsiveness was measured at age 13 using self‐reports and behavioral observation. Allostatic load was measured at age 13 and 17 using neuroendocrine, cardiovascular, and metabolic biomarkers. Emotionality was associated with higher allostatic load if self‐reported responsiveness was low, but with lower allostatic load, when self‐reported responsiveness was high.     

Legacies in Black and White: The Racial Composition of the Legacy Pool

Selective universities regularly employ policies that favor children of alumni (known as legacies) in undergraduate admissions. Since alumni from selective colleges and universities historically have been disproportionately white, admissions policies that favor legacies have disproportionately benefited white students. For this reason, legacy policies lead to additional costs in terms of reductions in racial diversity. As larger numbers of minority students graduate from colleges and universities and have children, however, the potential pool of legacy applicants will change markedly in racial composition. This analysis begins with a review of the history and objectives of the preference for children of alumni in undergraduate admissions. We then consider the specific case of the University of Virginia and employ demographic techniques to predict the racial composition of the pool of potential legacy applicants to the university. Significant changes in the racial composition of classes that graduated from the University of Virginia from the late 1960s through the 1970s foreshadow similar changes in the characteristics of alumni children maturing through the next two decades.     

Differences in Graduation Rates Between Young Black and White College Students: Effect of Entry into Parenthoodand Historically Black Universities

Black and White students who enrolled in college by age 20 were selected from a national probability sample, in order to estimate the prevalence of having children and the effect of having a child on probability of graduation with a bachelors degree. Black students reported significantly higher rates of having children than White students, but rates for Black students at historically Black universities were similar to those of Black students at predominantly White universities. After controlling for family background, achievement, and other student characteristics, having a child within 5 years of starting college generally reduced the probability of graduating with a bachelors degree for Black women and White women and men. The independent effect of attending a historically Black college was significantly positive for Black women but not statistically significant for Black men.     

Beliefs and Achievement: A Study of Black, White, and Hispanic Children

School achievement among black, white, and Hispanic elementary school children was investigated, and efforts were made to study the beliefs about academic achievement of the children and their mothers. A total of approximately 3,000 first, third, and fifth graders enrolled in 20 schools in the Chicago metropolitan area were given achievement tests in mathematics and reading. Black and Hispanic children performed at a significantly lower level than white children, but at fifth grade ethnic differences in mathematics scores were no longer significant when mothers' education was statistically controlled. This was not the case in reading, where differences were found after controlling for the effects of mothers' education. Interviews with subsamples of approximately 1,000 mothers and children revealed greater emphasis on and concern about education among minority families than among white families. Black and Hispanic children and mothers evaluated the children and their academic abilities highly; they were positive about education and held high expectations about the children's future prospects for education. Mothers of minority children and teachers in minority schools believed more strongly than white mothers and teachers in the value of homework, competency testing, and a longer school day as means of improving children's education.     

Beyond Black and White: The Model Minority Myth and the Invisibility of Asian American Students

This study of diverse Asian American students at a racially integrated public high school illustrates that the achievement gap is a multi-racial problem that cannot be well understood solely in terms of the trajectories of Black and white students. Asian American students demonstrated a high academic profile on average, but faced difficulties and failure in ways rendered invisible by widespread acceptance of the “Model Minority Myth,” which says that Asians comprise the racial minority group that has “made it” in America through hard work and education, and therefore serve as a model for other racial minorities to follow. Findings point to policy implications for teachers, counselors, school staff, social services and government.