Teacher education programs at Auburn University at Montgomery (Alabama) provide courses on multicultural education and personal relationship skills to develop in their students an understanding and sensitivity to ethnic bias and stereotyping in dealing with a culturally diverse classroom. The undergraduate component of the course acquaints…

Issues in preparing a review form to detect item bias in tests are discussed and the first draft of an item bias review form is presented. While stereotyping is the consistent representation of a given group in a particular light, bias is the presence of some characteristic of an item that results in differential performance of two individuals of…

Taken together, the contents of this document provide a picture of the Puerto Rican community, both on the mainland and on the island, in the mid-1980s. First, a brief overview of the Puerto Rican community is provided. Next, a demographic profile compares Puerto Ricans on the mainland with those on the island and both with the general U.S.…

This module (part of a series of 24 modules) is on how stereotyped conceptions of minority children and their families may influence teachers' expectations and affect student achievement. The genesis of these materials is in the 10 "clusters of capabilities," outlined in the paper, "A Common Body of Practice for Teachers: The…

This handbook is designed to be of assistance in the selection of literature, trade books, and instructional materials to meet the scholastic needs of all children, including minority children. Contents include a description of a staff development session designed to assist teachers in preparing for multicultural instructional activities and…

An historical review of the immigration and resettlement patterns, and a demographic profile of Japanese Americans reveals a myth of the "successful minority." Since the founding of the Japanese American Citizens League in 1928, Japanese Americans have defeated alien land laws, discriminatory immigration quotas, anti-miscengenation laws,…

Results of a 1975 survey on racial attitudes of blacks and whites in Chicago are tabulated and analyzed in the four reports compiled in this book. In "Structure and Context of White Racial Attitudes," George Surgeon examines the racial beliefs of whites in terms of such factors as age, education, neighborhood, and sex of survey…

The 10 guidelines in this guide to analyzing children's books serve as a starting point for evaluating children's literature from the perspective of racist and sexist attitudes. (1) Check the illustrations. Look for stereotypes, for tokenism, and for who's doing what. (2) Check the story lines. Look for subtle forms of bias in such approaches as…

A 1974 study surveyed the ethnic and multicultural content in prescribed elementary and secondary curricula used across Canada during the 1974-75 school year. Data sources were the documents for social studies, social science, and history programs published by the provincial and territorial departments of education; correspondence provided…

The major objective of this work is to test the heuristic value of the combination of certain aspects of cognitive theory and aspects stressing the social nature of ethnic groups and their boundary maintenance functions. The first section of the paper is a discussion of the cognitive theoretical approaches to anthropology of Goffman, Barth, Le…

Written by an Eskimo who created all the book's art work, drawings, and illustrations, this narrative portrays the theme that prior to white contact the Eskimos had a complex, satisfying, technologically developed, and progressive culture which was immobilized, fragmented, and exploited by European invaders: hence the title--give or take a…

The book offers an orientation to the contemporary situation and problems of American Indian peoples and provides a guide to the kinds of information which are available about Indians. The text and appendixes provide information concerning such basic issues as how "Indian" is to be defined and the consequences of one or another definition, the…

This unit of the Flexible Learning System (FLS), designed to give adults working with children aged 4-8 an understanding of a Black perspective, focuses on the use, and rationale for using, a Black perspective to analyze and evaluate the illustrations and written content of children's books. A Black perspective, including the contemporary and…

This fourth in a four-part series on why academic achievement gaps exist describes the Minority Achievement Committee scholars program at Shaker Heights High School in Cleveland, Ohio, a powerful antidote to the achievement gap between minority and white and Asian American students. It explains the need to break down stereotypes about academic…

This paper considers how teachers can deal with stereotypes in the classroom as they relate to foreign language learning goals, specifically the negative ethnic and cultural stereotypes held by Mexican university students about Americans and Canadians. It presents data concerning the emergence of stereotypes from various studies carried out in…