(2005). African American Family Life: Ecological and Cultural Diversity. Duke Series in Child Development and Public Policy, Guilford Publications. This volume brings together leading experts from different disciplines to offer new perspectives on contemporary African American families. A wealth of knowledge is presented on the heterogeneity of Black family life today; the challenges and opportunities facing parents, children, and communities; and the impact on health and development of key cultural and social processes. Comprehensive and authoritative, the book critically evaluates current policies and service delivery models and offers cogent recommendations for supporting families' strengths. The book is of interest to researchers and students in developmental psychology, family studies, public policy, and sociology; also of interest to educators and clinicians. It may serve as a supplemental text in advanced undergraduate- or graduate-level courses. The book is divided into three major parts and 15 chapters. Part I, Emergent Issues, Themes, and Conceptualizations, contains: (1) Ecological and Cultural Diversity in African American Family Life (Vonnie C. McLoyd, Nancy E. Hill, and Kenneth A. Dodge); (2) Sociocultural Contexts of African American Families, Nancy E. Hill, Velma McBride Murry, and Valerie D. Anderson); (3) Trends in African American Child Well-Being, 1985-2001 (Vicki L. Lamb, Kenneth C. Land, Sarah O. Meadows, and Fasaha Traylor); (4) Racial Wealth Inequality and the Black Family (William A. Darity, Jr. and Melba J. Nicholson); and (5) New Families, New Functions: Postmodern African American Families in Context (Belinda Tucker and Angela D. James). Part II, African American Families in Community Contexts, then presents: (6) Marital Relationships of African Americans: A Contextual Approach (Chalandra M. Bryant and K. A. S. Wickrama); (7) Work and African American Family Life (Vonnie C. McLoyd and Noemi Enchautegui-de-Jesus); (8) Homeplace and Housing in the Lives of Low-Income Urban African American Families (Linda M. Burton and Sherri Lawson Clark); (9) Religion in African American Family Life (Jacqueline S. Mattis); and (10) A Model of Extended Family Support: Care of the Elderly in African American Families (Peggye Dilworth-Anderson and Paula Y. Goodwin). Part III, Socialization Processes in African American Families, contains: (11) Family Practices and School Performance of African American Children (Oscar A. Barbarin, Terry McCandies, Cheri Coleman, and Nancy E. Hill); (12) The Cultural Context of Physically Disciplining Children (Kenneth A. Dodge, Vonnie C. McLoyd, and Jennifer E. Lansford); (13) African American Families as a Context for Racial Socialization (Stephanie I. Coard and Robert M. Sellers); (14) Beyond the Birth Family: African American Children Reared by Alternative Caregivers (Ellen E. Pinderhughes and Brenda Jones Harden); and (15) Style Matters: Toward a Culturally Relevant Framework for Interventions with African American Families (Howard C. Stevenson, Donna-Marie Winn, Chanequa Walker-Barnes, and Stephanie I. Coard). [More] Descriptors: Cultural Pluralism, Public Policy, Cultural Differences, Sociocultural Patterns
(2000). A Greater Fairness: May Justus as Popular Educator. May Justus started teaching at elementary schools in Appalachia in the 1930s. She believed that mountain schools were the center of community life and drew subject matter from the needs of the students rather than imposing a curriculum designed by professional educators. Teaching arts and crafts and operating a communal soup pot at the school, she was conducting democratically structured cooperative study decades before that became the definition of "popular education." She had published 12 children's books by 1939 when she wrote her first book that addressed a social problem–alcoholism. Her books taught children how to behave not by preaching, but by portraying children who learned to act for the family or the community, all in the context of their Appalachian heritage. She volunteered extensively at the Highlander Folk School, which focused on adult education, labor organizing, and the civil rights movement. Her exposure to black people at Highlander throughout the 1940s and 1950s led her to become committed to racial equality. Bombings of local schools and attacks on Highlander by segregationists prompted her to write children's books showing how Appalachian folks might live when their schools were integrated. In her books, the children recognize that black and white people already agree on the important things–strong families, loving parents, and strong communities that pull together in difficult times. May Justus was a true radical, an inside agitator who drew on the region's best values to enact social change. (Contains 51 endnotes.) [More] Descriptors: Adult Education, Authors, Change Agents, Childrens Literature
(1999). "Doing" School: Examining the Role of Ethnic Identity and School Engagement in Academic Performance and Goal Attainment. The relationships among identity, school engagement, and goal attainment for African American adolescents in urban public high schools were studied with 63 ninth graders. In bi-weekly workshops, information was obtained about student dreams and goals, self-concepts, and knowledge of what they needed to do to attain their goals. To explore engagement strategies, students were asked to respond to scenarios about students with school problems. Some preliminary conclusions have been drawn from this ongoing study. Race and ethnicity were not concepts that students generally situated inside themselves, but were considered issues that created problems or only mattered because other people made them matter. Students distinguished themselves from stereotypes, and clearly recognized that they had to traverse two worlds, a white world and the black society in which they lived. Students perceived race to be a problem of other people that then interfered with chances in their own lives. They believed that they were working hard, but often did not understand the paths they needed to take to reach their goals. (Contains 16 references.) [More] Descriptors: Academic Achievement, Academic Aspiration, Black Students, Grade 9
(1993). The Importance of Minority Role Models in Higher Education Mass Communication Curriculum. The broadcast journalism sequence at Southern Arkansas University allows African-American students as many opportunities as possible to review role models from different perspectives. The school has an enrollment of 18% Black students. Each area studied in the introduction to mass media course involves sections dealing with multicultural and African-American perspectives on matters relating to broadcasting. In this regard, television is an essential teaching tool because it refracts many societal concerns and effects. Controversial issues of public importance involving the African-American community can be shown and discussed with students, in addition to serving as a jumping-off point for research papers. A number of TV clips can be used to illustrate these points, such as: (1) the death of Arthur Ashe, who was buried in Richmond, Virginia, brings up important reporting ethical questions for students; (2) music performed by some African-American musical groups such as 2 Live Crew raise questions about censorship; (3) coverage of the Los Angeles riots raise critical questions about the media's cultural orientation; and (4) a look at how the media in the 1960s treated a figure like Malcolm X exposes students to a figure they have probably seldom seen. [More] Descriptors: Black Students, Broadcast Journalism, College Curriculum, Cultural Awareness
(2009). Mapping Everyday: Gender, Blackness, and Discourse in Urban Contexts, Educational Studies: Journal of the American Educational Studies Association. This article argues that by using theories of the spatial to understand how situated materiality (i.e., place) and contestations of identity matter when conceiving global and curricular space, educators may interrupt and rearticulate practices and systems of oppression. By focusing on globalization writ large, there is danger of leaving important concerns of the local unattended, and thereby failing to see how processes of globalization exacerbate problematic and oft-hidden curricular issues. Such diversions typify the most insidious quality of the current form of globalization; that is: an articulation of ubiquitous, uniform, and systemically oppressive social scripts. Through the contestation of such scripts, this article focuses on the achievement of better spaces when gender and race are involved. We offer a discussion of curriculum where students write about and argue against the dominant representations of their lives in Washington, DC. Concluding meditations stress that a new conceptual frame is needed in everyday curriculum theorizing, one that enables a reconstruction of curriculum theorists' positionalities with regard to our support, or rerouting, of the scripts that enable globalized systems of oppression and occlusion. [More] Descriptors: Self Concept, Multicultural Education, Global Approach, Theory Practice Relationship
(2000). Social, Spatial, and Skill Mismatch among Immigrants and Native-Born Workers in Los Angeles. Working Paper. Racially different economic outcomes stem from multiple causes, including various "mismatches" between minority employees and available jobs. A skill mismatch occurs when individuals' education and job skills do not qualify them for existing jobs. A spatial mismatch means that people live far from the work for which they qualify. A social mismatch refers to the practice of finding jobs through social networks; when friends and family are not well-connected to good jobs, one's chances of finding a good job decrease. This paper explores how these mismatches determine labor market outcomes, particularly wage impacts, in Los Angeles County for different racial groups and for immigrant versus native-born workers. Data on male workers were drawn from the Los Angeles Survey of Urban Inequality, census responses for Public Use Microdata Areas (PUMAs), and a unique dataset on job location and composition in southern California. The results indicate that all three types of mismatch matter, but they affect various groups differently. Social network quality mattered most for Anglos. For African Americans, the skill gap was more important than social networks or job growth in the local neighborhood. For recent Latino immigrants, individual characteristics mattered more than spatial or skill mismatches. Individual variables (including English fluency) also played a large role for longer-term immigrant and U.S.-born Latinos, but the skill gap also mattered. Asian Americans were affected by spatial and skill mismatches. (Contains 35 references) [More] Descriptors: Asian Americans, Blacks, Educational Needs, Educational Status Comparison
(2009). Access, Choice and Participation in Higher Education. CEE DP 101, Centre for the Economics of Education (NJ1). Commuting or re-location costs could be an in important influence on students' university choices and might even deter some from going to university. The barriers presented by these costs may be high for lower-income students, and students for whom there are cultural incentives to remain in or close to the parental home. If this is the case, then the geographical accessibility of universities has an important bearing on differences in higher education choices for different income and ethnic groups, and, in turn, on their earnings and life chances. Existing evidence has shown that university places are not evenly spatially distributed in Britain. Research has also found that "non-traditional" students–those from backgrounds in which higher-education participation is emerging–cite the location of institutions as a factor affecting their decision to go in to higher education. However, it is easy to make the mistake of attributing behaviour to ethnicity, gender or income when these behaviours are really due to other differences, like academic achievement, or home location which will have strong bearing on if and where students go to university. In fact, there is no large scale, systematic evidence for the UK that shows that proximity to a university really matters for higher education participation or choice amongst universities, or that it matters more for specific ethnic or income groups. The authors' research looks at these questions using administrative data on the population of school leavers and university entrants in England. These data allow the authors to link the choices of students from different ethnic and income backgrounds to distances between home and university, whilst accounting for schooling, neighbourhood and other background characteristics. Their key findings are: (1) Universities are not evenly distributed around the country but 90% of locations have three institutions and 4000 first degree places within 100km; (2) Non-white ethnic groups and low-income students actually live closer to their nearest three higher education institutions and closer to their nearest three high-quality research institutions than their white and high-income counterparts. These facts suggest that disparities in geographical access are unlikely to be a source of disadvantage to ethnic minorities and poor students; (3) Home-to-university distance has only a tiny influence on the probability of participation in higher education, relative to achievement and other background factors. Their statistical models imply that doubling the distance to the nearest institution would reduce the probability of white female participation by at most 4.5% in relative terms–reducing the probability of participation at the mean from 28.4% to 27.1%. For males, the effect is only half that, but there are no systematic differences by ethnic or income group; (4) In contrast, distance is the strongest factor influencing university choice amongst those who participate. The probability that a student attends a specific university decreases by 8%-15% with each 10% increase in home-to-university distance. This distance cost is observed for all ethnic and income groups, but is highest for Pakistani and Bangladeshi girls and low income students, and lowest for Black students and those from Professional backgrounds; and (5) The influence of distance on choice of institution could make a difference to the type of higher education received by different demographic groups. This is a moot point for ethnic minorities, who have high participation rates at "elite" research intensive universities relative to whites, but provides a potential explanation for lower participation rates amongst women and low income groups in top ranked research universities. The findings therefore offer no support for the idea that improving the accessibility of higher education institutions is an effective route to raising participation. However, targeting the accessibility of higher-quality institutions could increase uptake of high quality HE places amongst suitably qualified students from lower-occupational status backgrounds. Such policies might include action to reduce the role of distance (distance learning) but also policies to encourage higher status institutions to undertake outreach activities further afield. In any case, the authors find no evidence to suggest that such a policy need be gender or ethnically targeted. One further important spatial implication from this work is that the type and quality of higher education in which students enroll is in part governed by the type and quality of local institutions, which in turn partly determines the skill composition of the local population. Given this, the local mix of institution types and quality could have a strong bearing on the quality and composition of the local human capital stock. [More] Descriptors: Evidence, Higher Education, Research Universities, Ethnic Groups
(2006). Inclusion in Urban Educational Environments: Addressing Issues of Diversity, Equity, and Social Justice. Issues in the Research, Theory, Policy, and Practice of Urban Education, IAP – Information Age Publishing, Inc.. This book is motivated by the authors' experiences in working with students and their families in urban communities. They are particularly concerned about the urgent imperative to address the endemic educational and societal challenges that pervade the lives of urban students, particularly those who live in poverty, are of minority and immigrant backgrounds, and are otherwise marginalized within the current educational discourses and practices. In spite of the fact that over the last 3 decades policy makers, educators and communities across the globe have called for in depth structural changes, this is rarely evidenced in the discourses, practices, and structures within academic and practitioner spheres. This reluctance, despite articulations to the contrary, can be directly linked to normative theoretical and practical perspectives that are defined by assumptions that constrain urban students within restrictive boundaries. These narrow outsider worldviews based on notions of what ought to be, combined with ignorance of the realties of students' lives focus on deviance and deficits. They blind prospective change agents to the strengths and richness that students bring, and they delimit the transformative potential of social justice praxis within urban environments. The resulting discourse, in the form of deficit beliefs, thoughts, actions, and dialogues shapes urban research, theory, and practice. The authors contend that in order to counteract the debilitating impacts of these harmful constructions of urban and social justice, it is important to clarify this terminology. This book is divided into five parts. Part I, Intersecting Exclusions within School Culture, contains the following: (1) Exclusion in Urban Schools and Communities (Jim Ryan); and (2) Understanding School Culture: In/Exclusion Within Yearbook Discourses (Rene Antrop-Gonzalez, Debra Freedman, Jennifer L. Snow-Gerono, Anne L. Slonake, Pey-chewn DuoPeychewn Duo, and Hsiu-Ping Huang). Part II, Socioeconomic Status and Ability, contains the following: (3) Reflecting on Mary H. Wright Elementary: Ideologies of High Expectations in a "Re-Segregated School" (Susan L. Schramm-Pate, Rhonda B. Jeffries, and Leigh Kale D'Amico); (4) Seeing the Glass as Half Full: Meeting the Needs of Underprivileged Students Through School-Community Partnerships (Catherine Hands); and (5) Flipping the Special Education Coin: The Heads and Tails of Administering Schools for Students with Different Needs (Lindy Zaretsky). Part III, Gender and Sexual Identity, contains the following: (6) Gender: A H.O.T. (Higher Order Thinking) Link in Educating Urban Students (Amy Barnhill); (7) LGBTQ Students in Urban Schools: Sexuality, Gender, and School Identities (Dominique Johnson); (8) My Favorite Martian: The Cry for Visibility of Sexual Minorities in Urban Schools (Kevin Alderson); and (9) Urban Girls Empowering Themselves through Education: The Issue of Voice (Gunilla Holm and Bill Cobern). Part IV, Race and Ethnicity, contains the following: (10) Black Boys Through the School-Prison Pipeline: When "Racial Profiling" and "Zero Tolerance" Collide (R. Patrick Solomon and Howard Palmer); (11) White Fragility: I'm Leaving (Robin DiAngelo); (12) Anne Frank Teaches Teachers About the Holocaust (Leslie Shore); and (13) Addressing Multicultural and Antiracist Theory and Practice With Canadian Teacher Activists (Darren Lund). Part V: Toward Inclusion in Schools and Communities, contains the following: (14) Support That Matters: A Case Study in Raising the Achievement of Economically Vulnerable Youth (Norman Rowen and Kevin Gosine); and (15) Framing Equitable Praxis: Systematic Approaches to Building Socially Just and Inclusionary Educational Communities (Brenda J. McMahon and Denise E. Armstrong). [More] Descriptors: Foreign Countries, Social Justice, Urban Schools, Race
(2000). The Geography of Connection: Bringing the World to Students, Social Education. Discusses strategies used by two teachers for teaching geography to at-risk students to connect the subject matter to the student's lives. Includes techniques such as integrating music, art, language, employing simulations when teaching, using current events to improve students' reading skills, and utilizing computer technology. Descriptors: Computer Uses in Education, Current Events, Educational Environment, Geography Instruction
(1989). Which Kids Matter? And to Whom?. In Connecticut, the state with the highest per capita income in the country, 110,000 children, or 14.5 percent of the population, live in poverty; 39,000 of these poor children are 5 years of age or younger. Further, 38.5 percent of Black children and 62.3 percent of Hispanic children in Connecticut live in poverty. Poverty and membership in a racial or ethnic minority group are factors identified with children at risk of educational failure and dropping out. The high costs of poor educational outcomes are measurable in the welfare system, the criminal justice system, health care services, and unemployment compensation. Connecticut and the nation must provide all children with a good education in order to compete in the global marketplace. This paper, addressed to Connecticut legislators, presents research findings, interpretations, and analyses supporting the contention that early intervention is highly effective in dropout prevention; poor children at risk of academic failure benefit in the short and long terms from a quality preschool experience. However, among educational initiatives before the Connecticut legislature, preschool programs have minimal support, suggesting shortcomings in political will, long range planning and commitment, and leadership. The paper includes one chart and a list of 10 references. Descriptors: Disadvantaged Youth, Dropout Prevention, Early Intervention, Education Work Relationship
(1976). Some of My Best Friends… A Report on Race Relations Attitudes. Reference Series No. 8. This report sets out the results of a survey of what people from majority and minority groups think about race relation matters in Britain. The main conclusions are: (1) The concentration of minorities in urban areas has had the result that half of the population still see the area where they live as "all white" and 9 out of 10 see it as "all white" or "mainly white." A very similar pattern applied to place of work. (2) White people's attitudes appeared to separate "immigration" from "race relations." They were generally hostile to immigration: but accepted, albeit reluctantly, that Britain is a multiracial country and showed willingness to learn to live with it. (3) Young white people were markedly more tolerant and optimistic than older people. (4) There was substantial agreement betweeen majority and minority group members on a very wide range of issues, including the assessment of the importance of discrimination and disadvantage in determining the situation of minorities in Britain. (5) There was a favorable reaction to suggestions for overcoming barriers created by language and cultural differences and for stronger anti-discrimination legislation. Descriptors: Blacks, Culture Contact, Immigrants, Minority Groups
(1972). The Plight of Black Parents, Educational Leadership. Our concern is related to the matter of providing an education for all children which is commensurate with the ability and interests of those children within the framework in which they live, regardless of ethnic background. Descriptors: De Facto Segregation, Educational Opportunities, Equal Education, Faculty Integration
(1968). Cross-Media Evaluation of Color T.V., Black and White T.V. and Color Photography in the Teaching of Endoscopy. Appendix A, Sample Schedule; Appendix B, Testing; Appendix C, Scripts; Appendix D, Analyses of Covariance. Based on the premise that in situations where the subject requires visual identification, where students cannot see the subject physically from the standpoint of the instructor, and where there is a high dramatic impact, color and television might be significant factors in learning, a comparative evaluation was made of: color television, black and white television, color film, and conventional methods, in the study of the female organs as viewed through an endoscope. The comparison was also based on the hypotheses that color television would prove superior to black and white television in a case such as this where color is vital to identification and diagnosis, and that color television would be more effective than color films because its "live" character would heighten the drama of the subject matter. After three years of testing, the conclusion was that there were no significant differences in learning among the four groups of students tested, and that, to decide whether or not to use television or film in the classroom, considerations other than those of teaching effectiveness must prevail. Appendices detailing the tests used are provided. [More] Descriptors: Audiovisual Aids, Audiovisual Communications, Closed Circuit Television, Comparative Testing
(1969). The Graduate in the Midst of a Revolution. This address points out that the graduates have reached a stage in their lives less for rejoicing than for close examination of themselves and of education as an institution. The students themselves have exposed certain shortcomings of higher education, and taxpayers have become reluctant to support it. Activists of all races have not yet announced limits to their militancy; nor have authorities set limits to their reaction. For some time, the confrontation produced an escalating compromise of demand and concession, but lately, as the demands become harsher, authorities become less patient, and the public condemns both. Matters on which students question society at large include the imposition of prolonged adolescence, the widening gulf between the educated and the uneducated, repression (contrary to all civil rights laws) of the Black community, the presence of ghettos and barrios, the acceptance of war as a political tool, and a nationwide atmosphere of hypocrisy and immorality. Most important is the Black revolution, with its new sense of pride and expectation of social and economic fulfillment. The speaker reminds the graduates that, since it is they who have fomented these revolutionary activities, it is they who must suppress, accommodate, or surrender to them. Such criticisms acknowledge the importance of education and the probability that improvement will follow from a belief in legal equality, civil rights, open-door colleges, and the efficacy of an aroused social conscience. [More] Descriptors: Activism, Civil Rights, Ethnic Groups, Graduation
(1982). Family Matters Update: Design, Baseline Findings, Policy Implications and Program Developments from a Family Supports Study. The major portion of this presentation describes research results and policy implications of the Family Matters Project, a longitudinal study of social contexts as they affect children and families during the period of transition from home to school. Also provided in this portion are highlights of what was learned from delivering to 160 families (varying in ethnicity, income level, and family structure) a parental empowerment program involving home visiting and neighborhood cluster building. The remaining part of the paper describes participating families' feelings about conditions since the 1980 Presidential election and traces present and anticipated developments in the Family Matters Program. Reported results focus on mothers' perceptions of their children, stresses on working parents, the influence of social networks on the lives of parents and children, the neighborhood as a context for childrearing, and the transition of the child from home to school. Policy recommendations center on changing the workplace to reduce stresses on parents, the importance of opportunities for parents to make friends, and ways of neutralizing constraining forces of neighborhoods while mobilizing their enabling forces. In addition, a new philosophy for the provision of support to families, growing out of the Family Matters Project, is described. Throughout the presentation, effects of income on families are emphasized. [More] Descriptors: Blacks, Employed Women, Family Income, Family Programs