Recognizing the persistence of the cultural underlay permeating West Virginia life styles today, the research covered three areas: (1) cultural values identified with Appalachian culture endorsed by West Virginia Extension Agents and reflected in their work, (2) cultural values that reflect a distinctive Appalachian subculture, and (3) to what…

A study investigated factors in the backgrounds and present status of eighth and ninth grade inner city students at different stages of reading attitude development and examined how those factors compared from stage to stage. The 50 participants, 48 of whom were black, were administered three attitude measures. Data concerning student conduct,…

This study investigates the effects of the language factor and the cultural content factor of mathematical testing on two different non Anglo ethnic groups: the Chinese and the Chicano. Twenty five word problems, judged to be biased against the Chinese or the Chicano students, were selected from several seventh and eighth grade mathematics…

This dissertation investigates the patterns of intellectual growth and academic achievement of children who experienced similar elementary school education and differed in cultural group membership and socioeconomic status (SES). The subjects of this study were 271 junior high students in the Lincoln, Nebraska public schools who had been in…

This study investigated the communication of acceptance and rejection in intracultural and intercultural triads in an interpersonal setting. Specifically, the attempt was made to determine how members of five different cultures defined and interpreted the verbal and nonverbal behaviors which for them constituted acceptance or rejection. Fifteen…

In recent years there has been increasing interest in the effects of bilingualism on cognitive growth and on the bilingual's attitude toward himself and his 2 language communities. One of the most widely quoted studies on bilingualism is that of Peal and Lambert (1962) who dealt with the relation between intelligence, attitude, and achievement in…

This paper explores the thesis that a discrepancy exists in the treatment of physical disease over mental illness when care is provided by Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs). Inconsistencies exist in the form of narrowed and abbreviated treatment models coupled with outmoded views towards mental illness. Strategies currently used by HMOs to…

Tremont Consolidated Grammar School (Maine) has changed little in the past 50 years. The wisdom of Paulo Freire and other educators shows that student empowerment, critical thinking, and parent involvement are necessary for true education, particularly for oppressed people. An ecological approach to education involves the family, the community,…

This study investigates and determines how the processes involved in language acculturation and socialization become interrelated in the linguistic, cultural, and social development of white, Italian-American monolingual and bilingual children of working class parents in Boston's North End. This sociolinguistic study deals particularly with the…

This dissertation describes a college level ethnic literature course, American Minority Literature, whose major objectives are to promote a receptive attitude toward expression that is different from the traditional norm and to establish the significance of ethnic literature as a literary form. The underlying assumption is that the divergence from…

This thesis project describes an experiment with elementary students to see if cultural education changes students' attitudes about the culture studied. Two classes of fourth grade students were selected from a city and a county school in the central Virginia area. One class from the city school system was fairly homogeneous with 15 of the 18…

The purpose of the study was to compare the performances of black and white urban high school students on a conventional measure of intelligence, the Lorge Thorndike vocabulary test and a culture specific test, the Black Intelligence Test of Cultural Homogeneity. In addition to determining whether or not there were race differences in performance…

A case study approach is used to investigate written linguistic performance among black college freshmen from lower socio-economic and black nonstandard English (BNE) speaking backgrounds who are assigned to remedial-type English skills courses and generally assumed by their teachers and others to lack either or both competence or performance…

A study examined the influence of cultural values on classroom behaviors of adult Vietnamese refugees. More specifically, the study was designed to determine the effect of culturally acquired attitudes and personality traits on the refugees' classroom behaviors, the relationship between these behaviors and the cognitive learning styles favored by…

This study examines how the values and value orientations derived fro two differing, historical traditions influence the formal education of adolescent boys attending an Orthodox Jewish day school in Melbourne, Australia. The two traditions include the Chassidic variant of the great tradition of Orthodox Judaism and the Australian adaptation of…