Young African Americans face several critical issues such as dire economic circumstances, peer pressure, random violence, and feelings of alienation from the cultural mainstream in America. Black popular culture for these youth creates a value system born out of these same issues. This analysis will address the influence of Black popular culture…

In 2002, with pressure on students and educators mounting regarding performance on standardized tests, the author, who is an assistant principal at Skyline High School in Issaquah, Washington, and some staff members decided to have a little fun in the midst of the preparation for the state's high-stakes test, the Washington Assessment of Student…

The prevailing view in popular culture and the psychological literature is that White women have greater body dissatisfaction than women of color. In this meta-analysis, 6 main effect sizes were obtained for differences among Asian American, Black, Hispanic, and White women with a sample of 98 studies, yielding 222 effect sizes. The average d for…

The first comprehensive research handbook of its kind, this volume showcases innovative approaches to understanding adolescent literacy learning in a variety of settings. Distinguished contributors examine how well adolescents are served by current instructional practices and highlight ways to translate research findings more effectively into…

Richard Gambino's "Blood of My Blood" was of help to a writing instructor coming to terms with the role that her Italian ethnicity played in her life and education. Gambino's understanding of the inner tensions experienced by an individual who must negotiate between two cultures has helped the instructor in teaching working-class and…

In the writing classroom, students and instructors alike must not only theorize experience but must also experience theory. This is no easy task, for despite cultural studies' emphasis on the "subjective side of social relations," contemporary theory is heavily directed toward signifying practices, and, as Lawrence Grossberg argues,…

The Qualitative Studies section of the proceedings contains the following 13 papers: "Writing as Theater: The Marketing of the Digital Word" (Sally McMillan); "Rethinking Ideology: Polysemy, Pleasure and Hegemony in Television Culture" (Luis Rivera-Perez); "Low Power FM: A Small History" (Gregory J. Adamo); "The…

Critical debates about black expressive culture and black cultural productions within television are examined as a means of exploring processes by which questions about the American racial order, and blackness itself, are constructed, reproduced, and challenged. The central thread of the argument is that commercial culture operates as both a site…

This book is designed as a springboard for teacher educators and students working together to engage in thought and dialogue about what it means to be a teacher in American society. Chapters are grouped into four sections, each of which ends with a section of suggested activities for discussion, writing, and research opportunities. Part 1 consists…

The extensive media use common today among children and adolescents requires no special literacy skills. Television, video, film, and popular music can also be viewed or listened to without acquiring new skills. Without purposefully teaching the skills to decode the meanings behind the media, however, we leave students, as well as ourselves, in…

Recent instances of cultural conflict represent a single, broad, novel cultural tendency with real capacities to effect change. This tendency is labeled "black cultural projection." By altering American culture, black cultural projection questions entrenched patterns of political and economic domination in the United States, even though…

This document consists of papers that were presented at the 1991 and 1992 annual meetings of the Midwest Philosophy of Education Society. The book is divided into four sections. The first is composed of the society president's address at the 1992 meeting and a response to that address. The presidential address discussed chaos theory and the…

This issue of "Biography Today" features 18 short biographies about artists in a format young readers can enjoy and understand. Each entry provides at least one picture of the individual profiled, and bold-faced rubrics lead the reader to information on birth, youth, early memories, education, first jobs, marriage and family, career highlights,…

The origins and history of the skinhead movement in the United States are traced, beginning with their links with skinheads in England and focusing on racist skinheads rather than the less-well-known nonracist skinheads. How skinheads have developed within the larger youth group scenes, their ideas and activities, the role of music in their…

This book investigates the educative role of theater in processes of social change and development, and considers how to evaluate the use of theater as a small-scale medium in realizing development projects based on a participatory or interventionist model. The book is in three major parts. Following an introduction and an introductory chapter,…