Increasing numbers of children begin formal schooling without the requisite skills or abilities to succeed, most often due to deficiencies in language and emotional maturity. This study sought to identify potential precursors to later kindergarten difficulties that would suggest specific areas needing further study and support. Study participants…

This longitudinal study examined the experiences of out-of-home preschool child care to performance and adjustment in elementary school. Subjects were 145 children in Goteborg, Sweden, who were on average 16 months of age when they were enrolled in this study. Within 4 weeks of enrollment in the study, 54 children began center-based day care, 36…

This study of family preservation projects was initiated in order to have a clearer understanding of the ways in which local agencies collaborate to help families maintain a nurturing home and avoid out-of-home placement for children, and how school-age children are helped to remain in their homes and communities. An attempt to identify projects…

In order to determine the applicability of Contextual Family Therapy concepts such as loyalty, trust, and reciprocity to eastern as well as western cultures, Japanese and American college students completed the Relational Ethics Scale (RES), a measure of these contextual constructs. The subjects were 173 undergraduate students; 80 from an…

This study evaluated the relationship between musical independence and: students' gender; home environment; high school and college academic and musical experiences; and college instrumental organization, major, and instrument. The study also evaluated students' opinions regarding attrition in music education and evaluated the spectrum of musical…

This ethnographic, longitudinal study investigates the home literacy experiences of low income children to gain insight into why such children generally do not learn to read and write as well as middle class children. Participating were 24 children, approximately 2.5 to 3.5 years of age, in groups equally divided by sex. Subjects were from three…

The school dropout problem among American Indian youths is severe and complicated by the heterogeneous nature of the population and its unique social, cultural, and political history. To investigate the educational experiences of high risk Navajo youths in the areas of language minority status, traditionalism, critical markers, distance to school,…

An evaluation was made of PACE (Parent and Child Education), a family literacy program initiated in Kentucky in 1986. PACE was created because of the widespread belief that the state has a serious problem with undereducation of its adult population and the belief also that this problem is the result of persistent patterns of educational failure…

Data are presented from a long-term follow-up study investigating the interplay of various factors contributing to the developmental outcome of prematurely born children. Fifty-eight low-risk pre-term Hungarian children are compared to 100 full-term children, from birth to age 6, on socioeconomic status, family climate, and intellectual…

A written intelligence test with verbal, reasoning, and spatial subscales was administered to two comparable national samples of 1,000 thirteen-year olds in Sweden, tested in 1961 and in 1966. The increases were greater for girls than for boys, and the changes occurred simultaneously with several changes in social and educational conditions. To…

This document is part of the ETS Head Start longitudinal study, Disadvantaged Children and Their First School Experiences. The present study investigated the interrelationships among status, situational and process variables describing the child's home environment and the relationship of these variables to the child's concurrent…

A study explored how an ecological perspective in human development, as conceptualized by Urie Bronfenbrenner, could be used as an analytic framework for discerning patterns of relationships among the environments of home, school, and work and resulting implications for youth development. Three hypotheses were tested regarding how linking youth…

This technical report details all phases of a study to explore how an ecological perspective in human development, as conceptualized by Urie Bronfenbrenner, could be used as an analytic framework for discerning patterns of relationships among the environments of home, school, and work and resulting implications for youth development. (A summary is…

This report focuses on the education of ninth and twelfth grade minority students living in an urban environment. An explanatory model is employed to analyze each minority group separately. Both the external conditions in which the children live and school conditions and resources that may constrain or facilitate learning are examined in detail.…

The Texas Environmental Adaptation Measure (TEAM), a four-part instrument, is designed to assess children's adaptive behavior as it relates to their sociocultural and emotional environments. TEAM is intended to determine the eligibility of these children for special education classes and to provide information for individualizing their…