This paper reports on research designed to explore the status of children and the relationship of patterns of child care to social structure and social change. The study is based on interviews with scholars and government officials, an analysis of statistical data and research reports, and visits to day care centers, playgrounds, and other…

During the 1960s, Israel's primary schools were very dissimilar in their student-body compositions, and only half practiced ability grouping. Analysis of data on late 1960s male students reveals large contextual effects on educational outcomes in schools that did not group students and small contextual effects in schools which did. (KH)

Spouses and adult children caring for their frail aged have been largely overlooked by the human services community, often experiencing feelings of alienation, helplessness, and frustration while shouldering their caregiving burdens. Describes the development of a video outreach Family Training and Guidance Program in Israel which has created…

Assuming that the intellectual level of the classroom affects learning environment quality and student achievement, separating students into homogeneous groupings enriches the environment for high-resource students and impoverishes it for low-resource students. The converse occurs under heterogenous mixing. This argument is supported by data from…

Compared transactions in junior/senior high biology classes and indentified relationships between classroom conditions, lesson format, and instructional activities. Found instruction characterized by inquiry-oriented, laboratory-based learning led and guided by the teacher, with only medium dependence on the textbook. Also found the Structured…

Correlation of the Learning Environment Inventory with a semantic differential attitude test indicated that three learning environment variables (goal direction, satisfaction, and classroom organization) fostered positive attitudes toward chemistry. Course difficulty, interpersonal tension, and course speed were related to negative attitudes. (CP)

This study investigated the within-classroom uniformity of elementary students' perceptions of teachers' differential behavior, examining students at different achievement levels. Surveys indicated that achievement groups differed in perceptions of learning climate, negative reactions to teachers, and perceptions of teachers' differential behavior…

Among 206 Arab and Jewish Israeli elementary teachers surveyed, teacher orientation toward classroom discipline was related to the interaction of location and ethnicity. More authoritarian attitudes were found in Arab rural schools than Arab urban schools, and in Jewish urban than Jewish rural (kibbutz) schools. Cultural factors and social context…

This study examines the effect of one social milieu factor (Israeli kibbutz versus urban lifestyle) on Israeli adolescents' future orientation. Responses of 114 kibbutz and 112 urban adolescents to an open-ended Future Orientation Questionnaire are grouped into nine life domains: school and matriculation, military service, higher education, work…

This paper provides a descriptive summary of the historical development, the basic features, the organizational structure, the patterns of child-rearing and education, and specific research findings concerning the Kibbutz Movement in Israel. Four main types of collective settlements are described, along with the main characteristics and tenets…

Israeli kindergarten children were ranked on an advantaged-disadvantaged scale, and parent child- rearing attitudes were measured by means of a questionnaire. A strong positive relationship was found between rigid parental attitudes and disadvantaged rankings. Parent attitudes correlated with sociocultural factors, educational level, and national…

Examines the role of playgrounds that use discarded items or "junk" as an integral part of kindergarten classes in an Israeli kibbutz. Suggests that play in the junkyard, by including the whole person--muscles and senses, emotion and intellect, individual growth and social interaction--can offer the experiential foundations on which…

A study involving 5,472 Israeli students (grades 4-6) found almost a third reported being emotionally maltreated by a staff member and more than a fifth reported physical maltreatment. The most vulnerable students were males, students in Arab schools, and students in schools with high rates of low-income and low-education families. (Contains…

A study, involving 80 Israeli junior high mathematics classrooms, sought to establish some of the variables related to the classroom learning environment, with emphasis on teacher credentials. Results indicate that observed teaching effectiveness was the most powerful and most consistent predictor of the mathematics classroom learning environment.…

Three sources of variability in school achievement of children from demographically homogeneous families were identified: (1) socioeconomic status, (2) family configuration, which are direct and environmentally mediated effects of families' demographic characteristics, and (3) individual differences in the quality of the early environment. (RH)