This study investigates the interaction of three cognitive (functional, constructive, dramatic) and three social (solitary, parallel, group) dimensions of free play activities and their stability over time among boys and girls in a preschool setting. Subjects were 18 children attending a university preschool in Southwestern Ontario. Data for each…

Reviews Canadian anti-poverty programs according to which of five dimensions is dominant in their activities--biological and demographic, geographical and ecological, structural, psychological and cultural, and/or poverty-as-social-problem. (JM)

This newsletter discusses the disappearance of the world's forests and the resulting environmental problems of erosion and flooding; loss of genetic diversity; climatic changes such as less rainfall, and intensifying of the greenhouse effect; and displacement and destruction of indigenous cultures. The articles, lessons, and activities are…

This study employed an ecological perspective to predict variations in the rate of child abuse and neglect among children aged 0 to 19 years in Alberta, Canada, in 1986. Positive correlates of the child maltreatment rate included population change, unemployment rate, percent Native, and North West region of Alberta. Implications for assessing…

This study of contact between the French and English language groups in Canada is based on an ecological approach, emphasizing factors such as population composition, residential patterns, occupational pressures and age and sex differences rather than cultural or psychological ones. Part 1 begins with a general discussion of the problems of…

Reports on a study to compare the energy attitudes of ninth-grade students by gender and by their geographical location. Results indicated that students in Maine had more positive attitudes than those in New Brunswick, that females in both locations had more positive attitudes than males, but that, overall, all had nonpositive attitudes. (TW)

This study introduced and demonstrated a new methodology for item and test bias studies: moderated differential item functioning (DIF). This technique expands the DIF methodology to incorporate contextual and sociological variables as moderating effects of the DIF. The study explored differential domain functioning (DDF), so that the focus of…

To increase teacher participation in teachers' conventions and to close the gap between the theorist and the practitioner, the Alberta Teache s Association in 1964 initiated a study concerned with teacher and parent perception of sociological factors affecting the learning process in the classroom. This monograph includes the original study and 5…