Showing papers in "Harvard Educational Review in 1980"

Anxiety and Mathematics: An Update.

Abstract: Sheila Tobias and Carol Weissbrod argue that remedies for "math anxiety" need to be evaluated and new techniques devised that are more closely linked to theories of learning. They maintain that proper techniques can be effective in reversing female under-achievement in mathematics and that further research will indicate comparable techniques to prevent math avoidance. Research relating mathematical achievement to gender is reviewed.

The False Promises of Community Colleges: Class Conflict and Vocational Education

Abstract: Vocational education in public community colleges has been touted as an attractive alternative to the bachelor's degree. Arguing that vocational education has been developed in response to the rising educational aspirations of the working class and the decreasing opportunities for young college graduates to find employment, Fred Pincus reviews the history and controversies surrounding its establishment and growth and examines available data about its economic payoff for students. The data raise serious questions about the likelihood of such rewards, and these findings make it difficult to promote vocational education as a prerequisite to satisfying, well-paid jobs.

The Scholastic Aptitude Test: A Critical Appraisal

Abstract: Evidence presented by Warner Slack and Douglas Porter indicates that training for the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) can effectively help students to raise their scores, and that the test adds little to a student's high school record in predicting college performance. Their findings are contrary to pronouncements by Educational Testing Service and the College Board. The authors argue that students who believed they did not have to prepare for the SAT, as well as those who have had limited opportunities for preparation, may have been needlessly deprived of admission to the college of their choice. More importantly, Slack and Porter contend that students who accept the SAT as a measure of aptitude may suffer a loss of self-esteem by interpreting low scores as an indication of their own deficiencies. They conclude that their findings raise serious doubts about the fairness of the test, its validity as a measure of academic potential, and its use as a prerequisite for admission to college.

Synthesizing Outcomes: How to Use Research Evidence from Many Studies.

Abstract: As evidence about a new program or curriculum accumulates from many studies, a time comes to synthesize findings. What does all the research show? Is a program effective? Does it work broadly, or only with certain people in special settings? Literature reviews are designed to answer such questions, but all too often the effort is unsystematic. In this essay, David Pillemer and Richard Light suggest that these reviews are a major scientific challenge. They discuss several ways of extracting information from a group of related studies, and argue that a key ingredient of a strong synthesis is an analyst's attention to detailed features of each study: who participated, in what setting, with what exact program or treatment. Knowing such details is a prerequisite to explaining conflicting outcomes, an effort the authors believe makes fullest use of the varied information the studies offer.

Employment and Education of Mexican-American Women: The Interplay of Modernity and Ethnicity in Eight Families.

Abstract: Acculturation has been the major framework used to explain changes in Mexican-American families. It assumes that changing conjugal roles are associated with a corresponding decline in ethnicity. Instead of viewing traditional Mexican values as determinants of conjugal roles, and changes in those roles as the consequence of acculturation, the study examined the effect of wives' employment outside the home and level of education on conjugal interaction. It was found that as women acquired extra-domestic resources, they achieved greater equality in conjugal decision making without sacrificing ethnicity in other realms of family life.

Success Anxiety in Women: A Constructivist Interpretation of Its Source and Its Significance.

Abstract: Georgia Sassen examines the distinctly competitive definition of success which has fostered the popular notion that women are afraid to succeed. In analyzing women's anxiety in the face of competitive success, Sassen argues that recent research reveals that it is the climate of competition which arouses the anxiety, not success itself. Drawing upon a constructivist-developmental concept of anxiety, she points out that the "success anxiety" attributed to women might well be a reflection of their essentially female way of constructing reality, as elaborated in recent feminist theory. Sassen concludes by questioning the idea of removing women's success anxiety by training them to compete; she calls instead for a restructuring of institutions so that competition is not the only avenue to success.

Administration and the Crisis in Legitimacy: A Review of Habermasian Thought

Abstract: The methods and values of public administration have been increasingly questioned; as they become more rational and objective, administration has divorced itself from the practical problems of institutional governance. William P. Foster examines how the Marxist scholar, Jiirgen Habermas, has analyzed the problems of modern capitalist society and relates some of Habermas's arguments to the development and structure of administrative theory in the United States.

Sexism in Teacher-Education Texts

Abstract: Since professional education texts serve to shape teacher-preparation curriculum and instruction on a national scale, it is important to scrutinize these texts for their treatment of issues related to sex equity in education. Under funding from the Women's Educational Equity Act Program, Myra and David Sadker analyzed the content of twenty-four of the most widely adopted preservice teacher-education texts for space allocation to and treatment of the following topics: sexism, sex differences, experiences and contributions of women, and total text content accorded to females and to males. Their findings indicate that these teacher-education texts are characterized by omission and imbalance. The Sadkers discuss these forms of bias as they are pertinent to texts in the core areas of teacher preparation and offer recommendations for the development of texts that will integrate the issue of sex equity into the mainstream of programs of instruction for prospective teachers.

Domestication as Reform: A Study of the Socialization of Wayward Girls, 1856-1905

Abstract: Barbara Brenzel examines nineteenth-century juvenile reform policies by telling the story of Lancaster, a progressive reform school for girls in Massachusetts. Analyzing the efforts of reformers to socialize poor girls, many of whom were immigrants, she describes the contradictory dual purposes underlying these policies—fear and benevolence. The discussion of Lancaster illustrates how particular policies and programs for potentially deviant girls reflected nineteenth-century thought about reform, childhood, poverty, and especially the role of women in society.

Performance-Based Staff Layoffs in the Public Schools: Implementation and Outcomes

Abstract: In response to declining school enrollments, some local school districts are using performance criteria to determine the order of teacher layoffs. In this article, Susan Moore Johnson reviews efforts to implement such practices in four local school districts. The findings of the study indicate that performance-based layoff policies are not easily translated into practice. Furthermore, interviews with principals in these districts suggest that the unintended consequences of performance-based layoff practices may limit their educational worth.

Advancing in School Administration: A Pilot Project for Women

Abstract: The small proportion of women in educational administration has remained constant throughout a decade of supposedly heightened sensitivity to sex discrimination and despite efforts to bring about long-delayed reforms. The authors examine three causes of this persistent imbalance and describe an intervention project designed to help women achieve higher administrative status. They also describe the initial stages of a longitudinal research program tracing the careers and backgrounds of selected groups of female school administrators in New England.

Socialist Criticisms of Education in the United States: Problems and Possibilities

Abstract: William Proefriedt examines why classroom teachers have responded unenthusiastically, if not negatively, to socialist criticism of education in the United States. Although essentially in agreement with the socialist critique, he nevertheless points out its shortcomings and the important areas which it has left unexplored. He suggests that a union of the Deweyan tradition of critical thinking and the European sociologists' concern for ideology will foster a philosophy of teaching that is consonant with both the socialist tradition and with the idea that classroom teachers have an active, worthwhile role.

Education and the State in Capitalist Society: Aspects of the Sociology of Nicos Poulantzas

Abstract: H. Svi Shapiro reviews some of the major works of the French Marxist sociologist, Nicos Poulantzas. Classes in Contemporary Capitalism, Political Power and Social Classes, and a number of articles dealing with Western capitalist societies are examined to determine their implications for the educational process. Poulantzas produced an extensive and significant body of work on the class structure of modern capitalist societies, and the role of the state, ideology, and political practice. Because of the difficulty of his style, much of this work has remained largely unread. Nevertheless, his writings represent an important contribution to a fully developed radical critique of schools and education under capitalism.

Early Childhood Programs in Latin America

Abstract: Robert Halpern examines the role played by early childhood education programs in the development efforts of several Latin American countries. He presents a brief historical overview of these programs, and then describes and assesses the impact of several types of programs currently in operation. Outlining some of the political and policy issues that underlie early childhood education, he offers recommendations for improving its effectiveness as a vehicle for development.

The Passion and Challenge of Teaching

Abstract: Reviewing her years as a student, wife, mother, and psychiatric social worker, Sophie Freud Loewenstein examines issues of concern to many women who try to combine family with career. She discusses her late intellectual maturation, her conflicts with and resolutions of women's double-role dilemmas and her struggle with depression and self-doubt. Feeling that she acquired a sense of identity only when she finally became an educator—a role she has embraced—she describes the challenges and rewards of this role, highlighting the paradoxes faced by professional women who are also wives and mothers.

Education in the Eighties

Abstract: In the 1980s individual states will probably continue to have the major responsibility for education in this country. While the federal government may increase the percentage it contributes to the total costs of education, it will continue to be the junior partner in the enterprise, though one with increasing influence. This junior partner today places more demands on state government than its financial contribution seems to warrant. Conventional wisdom acquired in the 1960s and 1970s suggests that the federal government has set the right agenda on such issues as civil rights, poverty, and policies for minority groups and the handicapped—issues which state governments have generally neglected. But, under the Constitution, the federal government has not had the power to carry out its wishes for education without state and local cooperation. In fact, we often forget that a state's willingness to administer programs effectively is the key to the success of federal programs.