In this essay, I review three recent monographs: Jordynn Jack's "Autism and Gender," Anne McGuire's "War on Autism," and Melanie Yergeau's "Authoring Autism." Each of these texts centers disability--autism in particular--and in doing so, they highlight the insidious ways in which our cultural, institutional, and…

This article examines the complex social production of white racial identity. Specifically, the author theorizes white people's fear of people of color and make a case for conceiving of white racial identities as profoundly ambivalent. Drawing from a larger ethnographic interview study conducted in a small, rural, white community in the Midwest of…

Television is responsible for more multicultural education than our public school system. The literature reveals that children's programming reflects society's dominant values and beliefs about a number of diversity-related topics such as race and gender. This article describes the findings of a unique study of preservice teachers' evaluations of…

Reviews "Appalachian Values," by author Loyal Jones and photographer Warren Brunner, which depicts the culture and values characteristic of Appalachian people. Although the book successfully illustrates the moral core of Appalachia, values are presented in a noncontroversial form, rather than as a part of individual or social conflict.…

How middle class children interpret public messages about class status was studied through interviews with 24 children ages 5 to 14. Children, especially at younger ages, generally faulted individuals for creating their poverty, just as they credited the wealthy with creating their own prosperity. However, they generally interpreted the wealthy as…

The characterizations of women in three of Federico Fellini's films can be used to demonstrate the process of self-actualization real women experience during the fulfillment of the promises of the women's liberation movement. The films "La Dolce Vita" and "8 1/2" portray traditional stereotypes of women with traditional…

Investigated the role of disconfirming behavioral information and the limits on social class schema effects. Using a Bayesian model of social perception, it was found that unambiguous, relevant stimulus information influenced judgments. Although social class information did not affect relevant stimulus information, it did sway judgments in…

This publication contains two activities on aging for use with secondary students. The activities are designed to challenge the prevailing myths about growing old, to provide students with better information, and to foster more positive attitudes about older people. In the first activity, which will take about five class periods, students clarify…

An examination of the linguistic behavior of monolingual and bilingual Spanish-speaking children in an environment where there is opportunity to develop proficiency in two languages is examined. A review of the literature concerned with the relationship of learning processes to psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic contexts precedes an examination…

The special language of particular occupations, the role playing of those who practice them, and the terms in which the communications media and the general public refer to them evoke problematic cognitions about occupational functions and practitioner traits that determine an occupation's high or low social standing. Perceptions of occupations…

The usefulness of applying the Context, Input, Process, and Product (CIPP) Evaluation Model to school systems or projects where social change is needed is examined. The author introduces a systems approach to the examination of sex stereotyping, using the CIPP evaluation model, and sketches briefly the relationship between this model and the…

There has been disagreement among linguists and psychologists concerning the age at which children develop social perceptions of others on the basis of difference in speech. The purpose of the present study was to determine in what ways eight- and nine-year-old children from different socioeconomic backgrounds might react to dialect differences.…