This article examines decision-making patterns among teen-age consumers. Variables associated with several stages in the decision-making process (information seeking, product evaluation, and purchase), as well as “anticipatory” cognitions regarding family decision making are examined within the context of general theories of socialization.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/info/2488868

Decision Making Among the Young: A Socialization Perspective

Informal learning is often treated as simply an alternative to formal, didactic instruction. This chapter discusses how the organization of informal learning differs across distinct settings but with important commonalities distinguishing informal learning from formal learning: Informal learning is nondidactic, is embedded in meaningful activity, builds on the learner’s initiative or interest or choice (rather than resulting from external demands or requirements), and does not involve assessment external to the activity. The informal learning settings discussed all have learning and innovation as goals, and they all include guidance to newcomers through social interaction and/or the structure of activities. Along with the features in common, the organization of informal learning also differs in important ways across settings as distinct as everyday family and community engagements that are not organized around instruction; voluntary settings with an instructional focus, such as after-school programs; inno...

The Organization of Informal Learning

Although positivism means different things to different people, it is not difficult to identify research paradigms that would be clearly identified as positivist by friends and foes of positivism alike. I briefly describe one such paradigm and identify its principal features. I argue that even outspoken critics of positivist research–such as Elliot Eisner, Frederick Erickson, Henry Giroux, and Thomas Popkewitz–are logically committed to propositions that can be tested only by means of positivist research paradigms.

In Defense of Positivist Research Paradigms

A Likert-type scale was developed to provide a feminist attitude measure that taps the domains of gender role attitudes, goals of feminism, and feminist ideology. The development and testing of the scale involved two studies. First, a pilot study was conducted to help generate themes and items for the scale. Second, the validity and reliability of the scale was empirically tested. The pilot study was conducted with two samples, an undergraduate sample (N =99; ethnic breakdown unknown) and a group of participants in a women's studies conference (N =54; ethnic breakdown unknown). Subsequent empirical testing was conducted on two samples, an additional group of undergraduates (N =209; 43% Asian American, 37% Caucasian, 12% Hispanic, 4% African American, 2% Native American) and a subsample of the Women's Studies conference participants (N =25; 79% Caucasian, 17% Asian American, and 4% Hispanic). Results demonstrate that the final 60-item form of the Liberal Feminist Attitude and Ideology Scale (LFAIS) scale and each of its domains are highly reliable. Furthermore, the LFAIS has good convergent, divergent, concurrent, and known-groups validity. The scale was not susceptible to social desirability bias. Although tested on samples with fairly narrow demographics, the LFAIS shows promise as a reliable and valid measure of liberal feminist attitudes for use by researchers interested in an overtly sociopolitical measure of feminist attitudes.

Putting the feminism into feminism scales: Introduction of a Liberal Feminist Attitude and Ideology Scale (LFAIS)

(1980). Critical Theory and Rationality in Citizenship Education. Curriculum Inquiry: Vol. 10, No. 4, pp. 329-366.

Critical Theory and Rationality in Citizenship Education

This paper reviews recent studies on the relationship of classroom life to larger social/political institutions. It analyzes the phenomenon which Philip Jackson has identified as the “hidden curriculum”, that covert pattern of socialization which prepares students to function in the existing workplace and in other social/political spheres. The authors argue that this pattern has been largely ignored by social studies curriculum developers. By ignoring the values contained in the social processes of schooling, social studies developers failed to influence school programs in a fundamental way. To promote a more complete understanding of the dynamics of classroom life and its relationship to the larger society, the authors have identified social processes of school and classroom life which give specific meaning to the term hidden curriculum. They argue that a new set of processes will have to replace existing ones if the goals of social education are to be realized. In the latter part of the paper, ...

Social Education in the Classroom: the Dynamics of the Hidden Curriculum.

Curriculum & instruction : alternatives in education

Studies of college freshmen find that men are more sexist in their attitudes than women. Does this hold also for high school students? This paper reports the relationship of (1) sex-role attitudes to selected school and family characteristics and (2) attitudes toward family life to sex-role conceptions for women and men. The study is based on 529 students in grades 9 to 12 attending four high schools. The findings show that males are more sexist than females and Blacks more so than Whites. Women who are bright, from upper class backgrounds, and whose mothers work are more equalitarian in sex-role conceptions. For men, family background is unimportant, but attending an elite public school seems to foster equalitarian sex-role conceptions. Men's sex-role attitudes are harder to explain than women's, and, unlike women, their role attitudes have little connection to their family orientation.

Sex differences in sex-role conceptions and family orientation of high school students.

Development and Evaluation of Family Life Courses.

(1978). Critique of Michael E. Siegel's Article “Citizenship Education in Five Massachusetts High Schools”. Theory & Research in Social Education: Vol. 6, No. 2, pp. 80-84.

Anthony N. Penna

Papers

Social Education in the Classroom: the Dynamics of the Hidden Curriculum.

Curriculum & instruction : alternatives in education

Sex differences in sex-role conceptions and family orientation of high school students.

Development and Evaluation of Family Life Courses.

Critique of Michael E. Siegel's Article “Citizenship Education in Five Massachusetts High Schools”