“Thirty Years Old and I'm Allowed to be Late”: the politics of time at an urban community college

Within recent years scholars in both sociology of education and curriculum studies have explored what it is about the school that reproduces class, race and gender relations that maintain an unequal social structure. While it has long been recognized that school outcomes differ along these lines, the role that the school plays in creating differential outcomes and forms of consciousness that sustain fundamental inequalities and antagonisms has been largely ignored. This is as much true for scholars like Bowles and Gintis as it is for earlier functionalists.

This article begins to fill this void by focusing on the relationship between the ‘hidden curriculum’ and student culture. Data presented here were gathered as part of a larger study on the ‘lived culture’ of lower class black students in a community college (which I call Urban College) located in a large northeastern city in the United States. I argue that, rather than ‘determine’ student culture in any simple sense, the hidden curriculum and student culture emerge in relation to one another. Each creates aspects of the other and neither can be discussed or analyzed separately. The way in which elements of the hidden curriculum combine in a concrete culture to produce aspects of student consciousness is also discussed.     

The data collection matrix model: A tool for functional area and program evaluation

The management and utilization of collected data is crucial in evaluating programs and functional area effectiveness. Various assessment instruments may address similar functional areas of the college, yet we often fail to compile these data for comprehensive evaluation. The data collection matrix makes possible the integration of functional area data from numerous assessment sources and presentation of the information in a unified composite report. The matrix model will be discussed in relation to the various assessment instruments and the evaluation of functional areas and programs. This paper is directed toward institutional researchers who may wish to adapt the model to their own institution.Presented at the Annual Forum of the Association for Institutional Research, Louisville, KY, May 13–16, 1990.     

Ethical issues in consulting

Should NSPI establish on Ethics Committee? What is ethics, what are the ethical issues that confront consultants and how do they presently deal with them? This article is based on a year long research effort to identify common ethical dilemmas that arise in consultant-client relationships and the difficulties both parties have in resolving them.     

Predicting infant outcome in families of employed and nonemployed mothers

Differences in infant outcome, predictor variables, and their relationships were explored as a function of maternal employment. Thirty 18-month-olds and their mothers were studied. Child intelligence, attachment security, and dependency were measured, as well as frequency of stressful events in the mother's life, quality of the parents' marital relationship, frequency of the mother's social contacts, and extent of the mother's emotional and parenting supports. Also included were the mother's ability to cope; satisfaction with emotional, parenting, and child care supports; and role satisfaction. For children of employed mothers, attachment and dependency were negatively correlated; securely attached children showed less dependency behavior. For employed mothers, satisfaction with child care and frequent social contacts predicted secure child attachment. Satisfaction with child care, role satisfaction, and ability to cope were strongly interrelated. For nonemployed mothers, maternal coping predicted attachment security, while frequent social contacts predicted greater child dependency. Predictors of child outcome were highly interrelated for nonemployed mothers, with satisfaction with emotional supports playing a pivotal role. These differences suggest that different models to predict infant outcome in employed and nonemployed mother families may be appropriate.