Brown and black in white: The social adjustment and academic performance of Chicano and black students in a predominately white university

This article explores the academic and social experiences of Chicago and black students at UCLA. The analysis proceeds by examining differences in social backgrounds, high school and college experiences, and explores the relationship between these factors and college adjustment and achievement (GPA). Drawing upon recent theory on class reproduction and schooling we show particular concern with the role of social class in explaining differential outcomes. The findings indicate that blacks are more likely than Chicanos to feel alienated and perform poorly, and that social class makes no difference in these outcomes for blacks. However, middle class Chicanos perform better and are better adjusted than working class Chicanos. We discuss our findings in the light of theories of class reproduction, cultural capital, and racial signaling, suggesting that theories of reproduction must acknowledge the role of race in unequal school outcomes.     

‘Bringing Out the Best in People’: teacher training and the ‘real’ teacher

This paper explores the ways in which student teachers position themselves as teachers in primary classrooms. It focuses upon one discourse in primary teaching, which we have called the ‘real teacher’ discourse, and argues that it is mainly in terms of this that students come to understand ‘being a teacher’.     

Family Ecologies of Ethnic Minority Children

This article discusses a proposed interconnectedness between the ecologies of ethnic minority families, adaptive strategies, socialization goals, and child behavioral outcomes. The ethnic minority groups included are African American, American Indian/Alaskan Native, Asian Pacific Americans, and Hispanics. Demographic information on population size, geographic area of concentration, and preferred identity terms is provided. It is argued that adaptive strategies, including extendedness of families and role flexibility, biculturalism, and ancestral worldview, emerge from the ecological challenges of ethnic stratification status. These adaptive strategies foster the child-rearing goals of positive orientation to the ethnic group and socialization for interdependence, which in turn enhance the developmental outcomes of cognitive flexibility and sensitivity to discontinuities among ethnic minority children.     

Return intention of students from four developing countries

Students from Iran, Nigeria, Taiwan, and Venezuela studying at 30 U.S. universities in 1979 were compared with regard to their perceived likelihood of remaining in the United States permanently. Their perceived likelihood differed by country of origin. They also differed by country as to their choice of reasons that might make them remain in the United States and their anticipated satisfaction with the home country situations upon returning home. Within each country group, the students' perceived likelihood differed little in terms of selected personal characteristics, but differed significantly in terms of their choices of possible reasons for remaining in the United States. The reasons chosen reflected students' perceptions of the politico-economic situations of their countries.

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Zusammenfassung Studenten aus dem Iran, Nigeria, Taiwan und Venezuela, die 1979 an US amerikanischen Universitäten studierten, wurden miteinander verglichen, für wie wahrscheinlich sie es hielten, auf Dauer in den USA zu bleiben. Die von ihnen selbst empfundene Wahrscheinlichkeit unterschied sich je nach Herkunftsland der Studenten. Je nach Land unterschieden sich auch die Gründe der Studenten, in den USA zu bleiben und für ihre antizipierte Zufriedenheit mit der Lage, die sie bei ihrer Rückkehr in ihre Heimat vorfinden würden. Innerhalb jeder Gruppe von Ländern wichen die von den Studenten empfundenen Wahrnehmungen im Hinblick auf ausgewählte persönliche Eigenschaften nur geringfügig von einander ab, jedoch gab es erhebliche Unterschiede bei den von ihnen angeführten persönlichen Gründen, in den USA zu bleiben. Diese Gründe spiegelten wider, wie die Studenten die wirtschaftlich-politische Lage in ihrer Heimat einschätzten.

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Résumé Des étudiants provenant de l'Iran, du Nigeria, de Taiwan et du Venezuela inscrits dans 30 universités américaines en 1979 ont été comparés eu égard à leur perception des chances qu'ils avaient de rester définitivement aux Etats-Unis. Leur perception de cette probabilité différait selon le pays d'origine. Ils différaient aussi par pays selon leur choix des raisons qui devraient les retenir aux Etats-Unis et selon la satisfaction attendue des situations prévalant dans leur pays à leur retour. Au sein de chaque groupe représentant un pays, la perception de cette éventualité par les étudiants différait peu en fonction de certaines charactéristiques personnelles, mais elle différait davantages selon le choix des raisons possibles qui les poussaient à rester aux Etats-Unis. Les raisons présentées par les étudiants reflétaient leurs perceptions des conditions politico-économiques de leurs pays.

     

Attempts to condition homing pigeons to magnetic cues in an outdoor flight cage

An attempt was made to train 9 homing pigeons to respond to the presence or absence of bar magnets by turning either left or right after flying the length of a 20-ft outdoor flight cage. During initial training, color cues were placed in front of feeding stations on the left and right sides of the cage. The color cues were paired with magnetic cues by attaching either bar magnets or brass bars to the backs of the birds. The color cues were then deleted, leaving only the magnetic cues. Each pigeon received about 300 trials of color training followed by about 200 trials of magnet testing. When only magnetic cues remained, none of the pigeons were able to choose the correct feeder at greater than chance levels of probability.     

An Examination of the Effect of Elementary School Size on Student Academic Achievement

Prior studies that have investigated the relationship between school size and student academic achievement have produced conflicting results. For example, some studies found a positive relationship between school size and student achievement; other studies found that the relationship is negative. Typically, however, these past studies have not accounted for the influence of student ability in their analysis of the impact of school size on student achievement. The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of school size on student achievement while accounting for student ability, among other variables. The results reported in this paper suggest that school size has a nonlinear relationship with respect to student achievement. Thus, there is an optimal school size with respect to the maximization of student achievement.     

The Development of Selective Copying: Children's Learning From an Expert Versus Their Mother

This study tested the prediction that, with age, children should rely less on familiarity and more on expertise in their selective social learning. Experiment 1 (N = 50) found that 5‐ to 6‐year‐olds copied the technique their mother used to extract a prize from a novel puzzle box, in preference to both a stranger and an established expert. This bias occurred despite children acknowledging the expert model's superior capability. Experiment 2 (N = 50) demonstrated a shift in 7‐ to 8‐year‐olds toward copying the expert. Children aged 9–10 years did not copy according to a model bias. The findings of a follow‐up study (N = 30) confirmed that, instead, they prioritized their own—partially flawed—causal understanding of the puzzle box.     

Dimensionality of Reading Skills With Elementary-School-Age Children

Confirmatory factor analyses of data from 1,501 kindergarten to 5th-grade children who completed 3 measures of decoding, 3 measures of reading comprehension, and 3 measures of listening comprehension as part of a larger study were used to identify the dimensionality of reading skills across elementary school. A 1-factor (reading) model was the best fitting model for the reading measures for kindergarten through 2nd grade, and a 2-factor (decoding, reading comprehension) model was the best fitting model for 3rd through 5th grade. Structural analyses revealed little evidence that any of the reading-comprehension measures were more or less associated with either listening comprehension or decoding than the other reading-comprehension measures, indicating that each measure assessed the same underlying construct. These results support a developmental pattern for the emergence of decoding and reading comprehension as distinctly measurable constructs, with a distinct reading comprehension construct not emerging until the 3rd grade.     

Enhancing Teachers' Knowledge and Use of Inquiry Through Environmental Science Education

Journal of Science Teacher Education -