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This report captures the essence of four schools in four different communities participating in a study on young immigrant children in U.S. schools. The schools were selected from a national network of schools implementing the Schools of the 21st Century (21C) program, which provides a range of services such as child care, health care, home visitations, and family support designed to enhance children's ability to do well academically. The report examines how the schools and communities addressed the needs of growing populations of immigrant students. Researchers and fieldworkers conducted case studies involving document reviews and extensive interviews with key stakeholders. They found that communities lacked the infrastructure to help immigrants. Far fewer support services were available compared to those available for earlier immigrants. The four 21C schools were already oriented toward families and communities, with family resource centers, child care, home visitations, parenting programs, after-school care, and evening community center activities. Although there were cultural barriers to parents' participation in the educational process, many participating educators had developed innovative ways to overcome such difficulties (e.g., meeting parents at the workplace). Portraits of the four schools provide historical perspectives, program descriptions, focal points, and challenges. (SM)

A growing body of empirical data suggests that there may be a true psychological distinction between academic and practical intelligence. If there is, then conventional ability tests used alone may reveal substantially less than we want to know about people's competence in everyday practical situations. Evidence to this effect is reviewed from mainstream U.S. culture and from Brazil, Morocco, Kenya, and Russia. A study of 261 Yup'ik Eskimo children in grades 9-12 assessed the importance of academic and practical intelligence in rural and urban Alaskan communities. Academic intelligence was measured with conventional measures of fluid and crystallized intelligence. Practical intelligence was measured with a homemade test of tacit knowledge relevant to the environment in which most Yup'ik people live. The test measured tacit knowledge in five content areas: herbs, fishing and fish preparation, survival, folklore, and hunting. Adults and peers rated the children in terms of being a good thinker who could survive and in terms of being a great hunter. Urban children generally outperformed rural children on a measure of crystallized intelligence, but the rural children performed better on the measure of Yup'ik tacit knowledge. The test of tacit knowledge was superior to the tests of academic intelligence in predicting practical skills of rural children. (Contains 54 references.) (Author/SV)

In rural Mexico, the Progresa program provided educational grants to poor mothers of children enrolled in grades 3-9 and attending 85 percent of the school days. Payments were increased at the higher grades, a premium was paid for girls enrolled in grades 7-9, and every 6 months the grants were adjusted upward to compensate for inflation. The grants were substantial; a family with a ninth-grade daughter received an amount equal to 44 percent of a typical day-laborer's wage. This paper evaluates the program's effect on enrollment in 1998-2000, during which the program was implemented randomly in 314 of the 495 poorest rural villages in central and southern Mexico. Analysis focused on a panel sample of 19,716 children who could be followed and matched in five household surveys conducted between October 1997 and November 1999. Before the program started, Progresa villages and control villages did not differ significantly in enrollment rates of poor children. In the 3 survey rounds collected after September 1998, Progresa had a significant impact on the enrollment of each group of children who had completed grades 1-6 the previous year, with differences often greater for girls than boys. The cumulative cohort effect on schooling attainment was estimated to be 0.66 years. Progresa also significantly reduced the poor-nonpoor inequality in enrollment rates for grades 4-6. An appendix analyzes Progresa's effects on child labor and fertility rates. (Contains 29 references, 24 footnotes, 24 tables, and 4 figures.) (SV)

Against the backdrop of evolving welfare policies in California following the approval of federal welfare reforms in 1996, the Growing Up in Poverty Project is examining how single mothers and their children fare as they move from cash aid to jobs, the types and quality of child care arrangements selected, and if mothers' access to child care subsidies bolsters their employability. This paper reports on wave 1 data, collected in 1998 from the 410 participating mothers residing in San Francisco or Santa Clara county. Data were collected through in-depth interviews and observations of each child's child care or preschool setting. Comparative quality data were obtained from 176 centers and family child care homes in the Bay Area and in Connecticut during 1997. Findings indicate that child care centers and preschools were of moderate to high quality. The array of child activities and educational content of home-based settings was not impressive. Areas of quality weakness include the provision of ample language and reading materials, and time to read and exercise communication skills with young children. Mothers reported that kith and kin were more respectful of their own parenting practices than were child care centers or preschools and were more flexible in terms of when the caregiver was available. They also believed that the child received more individual attention, compared to those using centers. Women who selected child care centers or preschools often received subsidies to cover the cost. Only a small fraction of women selecting home-based arrangements took advantage of available subsidies. Several risk factors were associated with this pattern: (1) having an infant or young toddler rather than a child over age 3; (2) coming from a Latino or Vietnamese-American community; (3) having spent less time on welfare; and (4) living in a neighborhood with fewer center-based enrollment slots. Appended are descriptive statistics for quality data for both counties. (Author/KB)

This monograph summarizes current scientific knowledge about attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in children and presents issues related to ADHD in gifted students. Causes, assessment, diagnosis, educational strategies and medical intervention are discussed. A range of perspectives, including behavioral, cognitive, and neurobiological, are applied to the interaction of ADHD and giftedness. Provisional recommendations for parents and teachers are provided along with directions for future research. Recommendations include: (1) be aware that ADHD and giftedness can co-exist; (2) explore multiple perspectives in your pursuit of information about ADHD; (3) remember that the most important criterion for diagnosing ADHD is the degree of impairment experienced by the child in two or more settings; (4) utilize a multidisciplinary team to arrive at diagnoses and to develop comprehensive treatment plans; (5) become familiar with a variety of educational and behavioral strategies to determine which combinations might be effective for the individual child; (6) be cautious about promises of "quick fixes"; and (7) be aware that individuals with ADHD have their greatest difficulties in the "output" stage of cognitive processing. Appendices include the diagnostic criteria for ADHD, a glossary of neurological terms, and user-friendly references and resources about ADHD. (Contains more than 200 references.) (CR)

This longitudinal case study investigated issues that influence successful talent development in the arts and examined the effects of long-term artistic involvement on the lives of 23 artistically talented young people (ages 10-26) in New York City, all of whom had participated in a dance or music program in their elementary years. Most students were economically disadvantaged and from minority or culturally different backgrounds. Interviews were conducted with the students, their families, arts instructors, school teachers, and others. Four factors emerged as the primary obstacles to talent development: family circumstances, lack of affordable or appropriate instructional opportunities, peer resentment and social stigma, and the conflict between personal dreams and practical realities. The study also identified four factors key to student success in overcoming these obstacles: family support, instructional opportunities, community and school support, and innate personal qualities and psychological competencies. Evaluation of student accomplishments and observable behaviors concluded that 21 of the 23 students had achieved successful outcomes. Results have implications for development of interventions and programs to help young people with talent and drive but few opportunities. (Contains 92 references.) (DB)

There is hardly any estimate of returns to schooling in India based on national level representative data for the recent period. This paper provides estimates of the economic returns to education in India by gender, age cohort, and location (by rural-urban) for the most recent period 1993-94, and also evaluates the changes in returns over a period of time from 1983-94 using national level representative household survey data. These are the only national surveys in India that provide information on the wages and some of the labor market characteristics of individuals. The data show that the returns to education increases up to the secondary level and declines thereafter. There is evidence of substantial gender and rural-urban differences in the returns to schooling. The returns to women's education for the primary and middle levels have declined while those for secondary and college levels have increased during 1983-94. Also discussed briefly are the structure of education and the labor market in India. Includes 6 notes. (Contains 21 references and 13 tables.) (BT)

This report details a study that sought to answer whether welfare reform was meeting its goals of reducing mothers' dependency and boosting children's futures, and whether these reforms were having discernable effects on young children. During the second half of 1998, the study randomly selected 948 single mothers with young children from 5 cities: San Francisco or San Jose, California; Manchester or New Haven, Connecticut; and Tampa, Florida. Participating women in California and Florida had been enrolled for 6 months in new welfare programs. In Connecticut, experimental and control groups were compared 18 months after they had entered the new or old program. Findings from the first wave of data collection stem from interviews of the mothers; visits to their child care providers, both centers and individual caregivers; and assessments of children's early language and social development. Findings on how children are faring under welfare reform include the following: (1) young children are moving into low-quality child care settings as their mothers move from welfare to work; (2) child care subsidies reach unequal fractions of poor families and encourage the use of unlicensed care; and (3) young children's early learning and development is limited by uneven parenting practices and high rates of maternal depression. Findings on how mothers are faring under welfare reform include the following: (1) a sizable share of women are moving into jobs; (2) wages are low and household economies remain impoverished; and (3) levels of economic and social support gained by the women are uneven. Following an executive summary, contents of this report are: (1) "Project Aims," answering, "How are children and mothers faring under welfare reform?" (2) "Mothers' Attributes," answering, "Who are the women entering new welfare programs?" (3) "States and Neighborhoods," answering, "How do job markets, welfare rules, and child care contexts differ?" (4) "Homes and Parenting," answering, "How well do families function?" (5) "Family Economy," answering, "How do women get by economically?" (6) "Maternal and Child Health," answering, "What gaps exist in access to insurance and clinical services?" (7) "Welfare to Work," answering "How do women engage new welfare rules and jobs?" (8) "Child Care," answering, "Where do young children now spend their days?" and (9) "Early Learning," answering, "How well are children growing and developing?" Two articles are appended: (1) "Evaluating Connecticut Welfare Reform: MDRC and Yale-Berkeley Studies"; and (2) "Comparing GUP Children, Mothers, and Child Care Quality to National Norms." (EV)

Since a substantial majority of preschoolers participate in some form of child care before coming to school, the Cost, Quality, and Child Outcomes in Child Care Centers Study (CQO) was designed to examine the influence of typical center-based child care on children's development during their preschool years and as they move into formal elementary education. This report details the results through the end of second grade. Chapter 1 of the report describes the conceptual framework and methods. Measures are summarized related to children's receptive vocabulary, mathematics and letter-word recognition skills, behavior problems, sociability, and peer relationships; parent values and attitudes, and parent involvement; classroom/child care quality; and teacher characteristics. Chapter 2 describes the child care, kindergarten, and second grade classrooms observed, including a discussion of the continuity between child care and school environments. Chapter 3 describes the families of the participating children. Chapter 4 describes the children themselves. Chapter 5 presents the main findings of the study relating child care quality to children's outcomes and discusses their broader importance. Chapter 6 delineates the implications that follow from the findings and makes recommendations for policy and practice. The report concludes by asserting that high quality child care experiences, in terms of both classroom practices and teacher-child relationships, enhance children's abilities to take advantage of the educational opportunities as they enter kindergarten and through the early elementary school years. The report's three appendices contain additional data tables, technical information on measures and data analyses, and lists of papers reporting CQO findings. Contains 52 references. (KB)

This paper explores the demand for child schooling in Pakistan, using the "Pakistan Integrated Household Survey" (1991). There have been few such studies for Pakistan, a country with relatively low enrollment rates and education levels, high illiteracy, and a large disparity between male and female education. This study focuses on two potential sources of bias in the estimation of the demand for schooling. First, studies which do not distinguish between currently enrolled children and those who have completed their schooling subject their estimates to a form of censoring bias. Second, studies which exclude samples for children who have left the household may introduce sample selection bias if the decisions to leave home and to attend school are related. This study finds evidence of both "censoring" and "sample selection" bias in the demand for child schooling in Pakistan, and shows that the sample chosen for the estimation of schooling demand can alter the results. While the majority of educational resources in Pakistan are earmarked for improving access to primary schools, the money would be better spent increasing access to boys' and girls' middle and secondary schools. Includes 26 notes. (Contains 65 references, 11 tables, and 5 figures.) (Author/BT)

A 2-year project was undertaken to develop, test, and distribute a video-based program to train low-income parents in engaging their 3- to 5-year-old children in highly motivating play techniques in order to enhance children's cognitive, social and motor skills for school readiness. An evaluation was conducted of the Year One phase of the training materials and procedures, and the effectiveness of the parent-training in leading to higher school readiness scores. The participants were the parents of 103 preschool children from inner city schools. The findings of the child assessments after 2 weeks of parent training indicate that children of parents who participated in the program showed significantly higher scores than the control children in the Total School Readiness Test, particularly in the areas of vocabulary, nature knowledge, general information, and awareness of good manners. This suggests that types of play-training methods and materials developed for the project can impact the ability of low-income parents to enhance their children's cognitive and social skills. (Twelve appendices include a list of participating schools, data on the child care centers, and copies of testing instruments and data collection materials.) (JPB)

From its inception, Head Start's legislative mandate called for "maximum feasible participation" of parents in all programmatic efforts and policy decisions. Nevertheless, there has been little research done on the benefits of Head Start to parents and on the role of parents as mediators of child and family outcomes. The Head Start Parent Involvement Project in 1990 explored this virtually untapped area. This five-year initiative consisted of three parts: (1) a parent survey exploring life events and experiences that might function as barriers to parents' participation in Head Start; (2) a longitudinal study of parent involvement in Head Start assessing its impact on parents, Head Start children, and their siblings; and (3) an intervention focused on staff development and training to enhance staff's work with Head Start parents. The executive summary and final report describe each part of the initiative and its results. Major findings on parental participation in Head Start include: (1) that it improves family life through improved parent-child relationships, enhanced home learning environments, children's greater social competence, greater parental involvement in elementary school, and increased parental self-sufficiency; and (2) that parents who get involved in Head Start reported needing education, job training, or paid employment at the beginning of the Head Start year; were not pregnant; were not engaged in self-sufficiency promoting activities; had greater expectations for their child's long-term school success; and had a younger child in Head Start. The summary includes policy and program recommendations. Eighteen tables and three figures are appended to the final report. The final report contains 78 references. (EV)

While elementary and secondary educators are pursuing a results orientation as a means of educational reform and pedagogical improvement, the early childhood field has not explored sufficiently the desirability and feasibility of, nor the process for, establishing child-based standards and results for younger children. This report presents a synthesis of issues discussed at two issues forums held in 1995 and 1996. Following an introductory chapter, chapter 2 distinguishes between types of results and purposes of results as they apply to young children. Chapter 3 examines the desirability of child-based results in early childhood education in terms of the impact on teachers' practice and children's experiences, public understanding, funding, and the relationship of early care and education to other services. Chapter 4 identifies the following five conditions necessary for child-based results to be feasible: broad participation in the identification of results; identification of appropriate results; clarity concerning which children to include; appropriate measurement of results; and linking of child-based results to efforts to improve the lives of children. Chapter 5 outlines steps to advance a results-based approach: increase public consciousness and participation; plan strategically; identify and choose results carefully; develop appropriate, cost-effective approaches to assessment and data collection; put theory into practice; explore ways to adequately fund a results approach; and communicate, implement, and evaluate such programs. Five appendices contain the meeting agendas of each of the issues forums and three papers presented at the meetings. (TJQ)

This report describes four projects that apply Robert J. Sternberg's theories to various aspects of giftedness and gifted performance. Project 1, a construct validation and educational application of Sternberg's triarchic theory of human intelligence, revealed that students who are instructed and whose achievement is evaluated in a way that matches (at least partially) their profile of abilities will perform better in school than children who are mismatched. Project 2, which examined the construct validity of Sternberg's theory of mental self-government, found that teachers tend to: (1) evaluate more positively students who match their own profile or style and (2) overestimate the extent to which students match their own style of thinking. Project 3, construct validation of Sternberg and Lubart's investment theory of creativity, found that creative individuals are people who "buy low and sell high" in the world of ideas. Project 4, an investigation of Sternberg's pentagonal implicit theory of giftedness, found that society labels people as gifted to the extent that the people meet five criteria: excellence, rarity, productivity, demonstrability, and value. Overall, the four projects reveal the value of a theory-based approach to understanding giftedness. Each of the four parts contains references. (Author/DB)

This report provides an overview of the second year of the Family Education and Training Program, a project constructed to: (1) investigate the impact of a comprehensive child care training program on the employability of low-income mothers; and (2) assess the effect of training and support in parenting and job readiness on parenting skills and children's cognitive and social competence. During the first year of the project, a comprehensive literature review was conducted. During the second year, the idea behind the project was converted into a field program and research design. Based on findings from the literature review, an intervention was designed, an implementation plan was developed, and a site was selected. Section I of the report introduces the project, following which section II presents key findings from the Year I literature review. In sections III, IV, and V, the report reviews existing child care training, parenting, and job readiness curricula, with the goal of laying the foundation of the curriculum to be used in the project. Section VI surveys the experiences of current and recently operating child care training programs, culling field-based lessons on program structure, population, staffing, support services, and outcomes. Section VII recounts advancements made in locating an appropriate home for the program and developing a research design for evaluating the program. Finally, section VIII explicitly describes the structure and content of the program's proposed intervention, detailing its framework, schedule, and staffing patterns. Four appendices present reference lists of child care training curricula and projects, parenting curricula, and job readiness curricula. (Contains 46 references.) (Author/AC)

The Yale University Library is now organized to move ahead with Project Open Book, the conversion of 10,000 books from microfilm to digital imagery. In the first phase of the Project--the organizational phase--a Steering Committee was established that included several faculty members, and a project team was created. In addition, Yale conducted a formal bid process and selected the Xerox Corporation to serve as its principal partner in the project. Xerox has identified for Yale the required equipment, software, and services to complete the project, as well as their costs, and has proposed a three-phase implementation plan. The implementation will ultimately result in a conversion subsystem, browsing stations distributed on the campus network within the Yale Library, a subsystem for storing 10,000 books in digital form, and network access to high-quality image printers. The process leading to the selection of the vendor helped isolate areas of risk and uncertainty as well as key issues to be addressed during the life of the project. The Yale Library is now prepared to select the material for conversion to digital image form and to seek funding, initially for the first phase, and then for the entire project. This report reviews the purpose and scope of the project, outlines the steps taken in the first (organization) phase, and presents a summary of the results to date. (Author/KRN)

This report presents the results of the first year of a 5-year project designed to investigate the impact of child care training programs on the employability of low-income women and assess the impact of such training on these women's parenting skills. The first year of the project was spent reviewing the literature. This report of the project and its literature review is divided into five sections. Section 1 studies the population of low-income women. Topics include theories of adult and adolescent development and learning, and women's career development. Section 2 chronicles the history of federal employment and training policies, vocational education efforts, and welfare programs. Section 3 examines programs designed to train low-income women for general employment and for child care occupations; compares the training of individuals for the child care field and for parenthood; and discusses parent education. Section 4 considers issues germane to the implementation of job training and parenting programs. These issues are: (1) child care worker supply and demand; (2) career ladders in the child care field; and (3) the funding of training programs. Section 5 summarizes the information gathered in the literature review and discusses its implications for future training and parent education efforts. A reference list of more than 300 items is provided. (BC)

This paper reviews the literature on the effects of what children do with their time out of school and the impact of various care arrangements. Much of the research has focused on "latchkey children": children who care for themselves. In this paper, a summary of the research findings on the latchkey group is followed by a review of what is known about children in arrangements that are supervised by adults. Methodological limitations and disparate results preclude the drawing of definitive conclusions from the studies. In spite of this, the continued proliferation of school-age programs makes it imperative that current knowledge of child development and the effects of child care arrangements be used to define and measure the indicators of quality child care for school-age children. Sections concern: (1) research on school-age children; (2) children in self-care; (3) programs for children in self-care; (4) school-age child care programs; (5) definitions of program quality in school-age child care; and (6) lessons for program evaluation, including methodological issues and suggestions for future research. A list of 90 references is included. (RH)

In presenting a new strategy for redesigning jobs to increase the work motivation and satisfaction of employees, the paper examines a basic theory of job motivation, a group of core dimensions of jobs which create the conditions for such internal motivation to develop on the job, a set of diagnostic tools for evaluating jobs and people's reaction to them, for pinpointing exactly what aspects of specific jobs are most critical to a successful change attempt, and a set of five action steps to increase employee motivation, satisfaction, and productivity. The five implementing concepts are: (1) forming natural work units, (2) combining tasks, (3) establishing client relationships, (4) vertical loading, and (5) opening feedback channels. A job enrichment project conducted at The Travelers Insurance Companies is summarized to illustrate practical applications of the change procedures. (MW)

The report describes the Job Diagnostic Survey (JDS), an instrument designed to measure the following classes of variables: (1) objective job characteristics, particularly the degree to which jobs are designed so that they enhance work motivation and job satisfaction; (2) personnel affective reactions of individuals to their jobs and work setting; (3) the readiness of individuals to respond positively to "enriched" jobs--jobs with high potential for generating internal work motivation. Based on a specific theory of how jobs affect employee motivation, the JDS is intended to: (1) diagnose existing jobs to determine if (and how) redesigning could improve employee productivity and satisfaction; and (2) evaluate the effect of job changes on employees--whether the changes derive from deliberate "job enrichment" projects or from naturally occurring modifications of technology or work systems. The JDS has gone through three cycles of revision and pre-testing. Reliability and validity data are summarized for 658 employees in 62 different jobs in seven organizations who have responded to the revised instrument. Two supplementary instruments are also described: (1) a rating form for assessing "target" jobs; and (2) a short form of the JDS. All instruments and scoring keys are appended. (Author/MW)

This study investigated the pretend play behavior of 16 boys and girls aged 12 and 18 months. Each child was presented a standard set of stimulus materials during two home visits. For each of three 10-minute episodes, the child's pretend activities were recorded by means of a coded observation schedule. During episode 1 the child played alone, during episode 2 the child played alone or with the mother (with order reversed across visits), and during episode 3 the child played alone. Analysis of the data suggested that pretending with age, and that mothers enhanced the play of older girls. A developmental progression from self-directed to other-directed activities was also indicated. Analysis of sex differences showed that differences in pretending may appear as early as 12 months of age and that girls are involved more than boys in other-directed nurturing activities and in the use of representations of animate objects. The effect of the mothers on pretend behaviors was examined and it is suggested that although sex differences in overall level of pretending may stem from direct adult interventions, the selective maternal enhancement of sex stereotyped patterns was not found. The results suggest that in a semi-naturalistic situation, mothers differentially influence the tendency of a child to engage in pretend play behaviors, not the content of the pretend behavior. (GO)

This study recorded the pretend play behavior of a total of 22 boys and girls aged 20 and 26 months to determine the effects of age, sex, toy type, and order of toy presentation on the amount of pretending observed during two home visits. Each visit consisted of three segments: two play episodes of 10 minutes each and an intervening segment of approximately 40 minutes in which each child performed on standard cognitive tasks. During the play episodes each child was presented with high prototypical toys and less prototypical toys. An observer continuously tracked the child's activities on a tape recorder with a 10-second time base and a coded observation schedule; the tapes were transcribed to obtain for each play episode measures of "pretend frequency,""variation on pretend," and "total play activity." Results indicate that (1) although pretending with less prototypical toys was depressed when children were 20 months of age, it increased with age for both sexes; (2) with highly prototypical materials, girls' pretending increased between 20 and 26 months of age, whereas boys' pretending decreased; and (3) pretending increased as children became more familiar with the situation. These findings are discussed in terms of theoretical formulations which interpret early pretending as an index of the child's acquisition of mental representations which code objects, activities, and social rules. (GO)

This longitudinal study examined the effects of one year of full-day Head Start day care experiences on the long-term motivational and cognitive changes in 29 low-income black children aged 51-61 months. The children were separated into two groups; one attended a full-day kindergarten similar to Head Start, and the other was sent to half-day public kindergarten. A control group, composed of 20 children who attended private nursery school and subsequently attended kindergartens in their own neighborhoods, was also used. During the day care program and through the middle of the first grade year, data were collected in seven time periods for three areas of motivational/cognitive interaction: (1) changes in the relationship between personal interaction variables, (2) changes in intrinsic need to interact effectively and competently with the environment, and (3) changes in the impulsivity/reflectivity dimension. Comparison of the data from the two experimental groups showed little indication that the kindergarten program had produced significant effects; the small effects shown late in the year would have required an extension of the program for verification. However, there were no indications of fade-out effects of Head Start for either group. In addition, the disadvantaged groups performed comparably to the economically advantaged group except on tests which depended on high verbal ability. (GO)

Job enrichment rapidly is becoming one of the most widely used behavioral science strategies for organizational change. And there is scattered but compelling evidence that, under certain conditions, the technique can lead simultaneously to both improved productivity and an increase in the quality of employee work experiences. Yet observations of on-going job enrichment projects in a number of organizations suggest that the approach is failing in practice at least as often as it is succeeding--and that its future as a strategy for personal and organizational change may be bleak. The report (1) explores a number of frequently-observed errors in implementing job enrichment that can lead to "failures" of the technique, and (2) identifies a number of ingredients found to be common to most of the "successful" job enrichment projects that were observed. (Author)

This study examines the degree to which young children are influenced by the familiarity of an adult participant in their pretend play with toys which vary in resemblance to highly prototypical objects (e.g., cup-like cups or doll-like dolls). A group of 29 children, mean age 21 months, was divided into two experimental groups balanced by sex; 15 children were assigned to an unfamiliar adult experimenter, and 14 to a familiar one. Each child was observed in two 12-minute play episodes in which pretend play suggestions were made by the experimenter. Results suggest that: (1) pretending with highly prototypical objects is enhanced by thematic proposals of a familiar adult, whereas pretending with less prototypical objects is reduced by these proposals; (2) suggestions from an unfamiliar adult produce a low level of pretending regardless of toy type; (3) children's difficulty in transforming less prototypical objects to suit proposed themes is cognitive rather than motivational; and (4) in the situations studied, girls are more sensitive than boys to the characteristics of people, and boys are more sensitive than girls to the characteristics of materials. (Author/ED)

Evidence which suggests that pretend activities become increasingly independent of the presence of realistic objects is examined in this paper. Results of research on pretend behavior in children 1 1/2 - 2 years of age are described and analyzed. Striking changes in pretend behavior are shown to occur during the second year of life. Pretend play is treated as a paradigm for understanding how children represent objects and relations. It is argued that the child can pretend that one thing is another when he can represent objects (or object activities) as prototypes and when he can use the core properties of prototypes to transform representations of immediate physical stimulation. The analysis suggests a three-phase sequence in the development of pretending based on a progression from the analogue mapping of representations to the selection and, eventually, the production of the core properties of object representations. (Author/ED)

This report describes a comparative study of methods of home-based infant and parent education. The study involved 108 children, aged 1 to 2 1/2 years, in six groups of 18 each. In three groups a home visitor worked with the children and their mothers using a curriculum which focused on either play, language, or social development. In a fourth group, the home visitor used elements of all three curricula with the mother only. In the fifth group, similar curriculum elements were used by the home visitor with the baby only. A sixth group (control) consisted of babies who were tested but not visited. Children were tested at 12, 18, 24, and 30 months of age for curriculum effects in language development, mother-child interaction, and cognitive development as evidenced in play. An in-depth comparison of subject performance in the six groups is provided. Extensive appendices, comprising most of the report, include sample recruitment procedures, demographic characteristics, and correlational analyses of demographic variables. In addition, extensive descriptions of the curricula, laboratory procedures, measurement techniques, and coding manuals are included. (BRT)

This package contains five home-based intervention curricula for families with children between 12 and 30 months of age. Three independent curricula (each emphasizing children's language, play or social development) enlist the mother's aid as observer, teacher and researcher, and promote a three-way interaction among mother, child, and home-visitor. The Mother Only curriculum combines the three independent curricula into a single program in which the primary interaction is between the mother and home-visitor, to the exclusion of the child (who should benefit from the education the mother receives). Likewise, the Baby Only curriculum is in combination form, but with the mother excluded from the intervention program. Each curriculum contains materials for a program of 32 visits by a trained home visitor over an 18-month period. The goals, home-visitor role, patterns of visits, and problems encountered in testing the language, play, and social development curricula are briefly discussed. (ED)

The purpose of this paper is to resolve what determines the success or failure of innovations in participatory government; and, more precisely what are the dynamics of institution-building by which the ideas of participation and decentralization are implemented and enduring neighborhood institutions are established. To answer these questions, a number of decentralization experiments were examined to determine which organization structures, social conditions, and political arrangements are most conducive to successful innovation and institution -building. This inquiry has several theoretical implications: (1) it examines the nature and utility of political resources available to ordinary citizens seeking to influence their government; (2) it comments on the process of innovation (3) the inquiry addresses the problem of political development, at least as it exists in urban neighborhoods; and (4) it seeks to lay the groundwork for a theory of neighborhood problem-solving and a strategy of neighborhood development. (Author/JM)

This study examined the patterns of ongoing play manifested over a year's time by 141 three- and four-year-old boys and girls at nursery schools and daycare centers. The relationships between such play and concurrent language usage and the child's patterns of television viewing at home were examined during this period. Parents of the children were also randomly assigned to one of three intervention groups or to a control group. Intervention groups received training either in stimulating the children's imaginative play, stimulating the child's cognitive and language development, or in controlling the child's television-viewing frequency and encouraging more discriminating use of the set. The control group merely kept logs of children's viewing as did the other parents. Based on this research, eight recommendations were made. Family interview data relating to home organization, daily routines, patterns of discipline, parental aggressive behavior, and traumatic events or stress, suggest that the laxity of control over TV viewing and a general lack of alternative interests by the family may expose children to greater influence by the TV programming and yield the danger of more initiative aggressive or hyperactive behavior. (Author/JEG)

Two influential theories of intellectual development are reviewed and analyzed: the psychometric framework, based on the factorial composition of intelligence, and the Piagetian model, based on assimilation and accomodation through four stages of intellectual development. A third concept is the componential theory of intelligence, based on information processing models, and consisting of two basic units of analysis, the component and the metacomponent. The component is described as an elementary psychological process which operates on internal representations of objects on symbols; these components are encoding, inference, mapping, application, justification, and response. A metacomponent is described as a higher order psychological process which controls processes related to executing components; metacomponents consist of component selection, representation selection, strategy selection or planning, strategy monitoring, speed-accuracy tradeoff decisions, and solution monitoring. Conclusions were made, based on research using parochial school children in grades 2, 4, and 6 and college level adults: (1) that children show increased use of exhaustive information processing as they grow older; (2) older children are generally less willing to surrender accuracy for speed; and (3) older individuals are more consistent in applying a strategy to problem solving, although there is no evidence of a general strategy shift in time for any age group. Bibliographical references are appended. (MH)

About 25 children in each of grades 3, 5, 7, 9, and 11 were tested in their ability to solve linear syllogisms, such as: John is taller than Mary. Mary is taller than Pete. Who is tallest--John, Mary, or Pete? Response latencies and error rates decreased across grade levels and sessions. Component latencies also generally decreased with increasing age. Four alternative information-processing models were fit to the group latency data at each grade level. These models were: (1) spatial, whereby the terms of a linear syllogism are represented in the form of a linear spatial array; (2) linguistic, whereby linear syllogisms are solved via inferences on functional relations represented by linguistic deep structures; (3) algorithmic, whereby people solve linear syllogisms by applying a series of simple, essentially mechanical steps; and (4) mixed, which combines selected features of the spatial and linguistic models, and adds new features of its own. The latency data supported the mixed model at each grade level, although in grade 9 the model was not the preferred one until the second session of testing. (Author/MH)

Developmental patterns in the solution of verbal analogies, especially the recognition of higher-order analogical relations, were traced. The investigation sought to: (1) provide new developmental tests of a componential theory of analogical reasoning; (2) identify strategy changes during the transition from midchildhood (grade 3) to adulthood (college); (3) compare the development of reasoning across five different verbal relations; and (4) to validate a new method (stem-splitting) of isolating component cognitive processes. Twenty subjects in each of grades three, six, nine, and in college were tested on their abilities to solve verbal analogies based on synonymy, antonymy, category membership, linear ordering, and function in three different formats. It was found that the componential theory was successful in accounting for response-time data at all grade levels and error data at all but the college level; third- and sixth-graders used a different strategy from the strategy used by ninth-graders and college students; antonymous and functional relations were the easiest to process at all levels; and the new method of isolating component cognitive processes provided new insights into age-related strategy changes in the solution of verbal analogies. (Author/MH)

Quebec colleges remained firmly entrenched in the pure classicism of prerevolutionary France until well into the twentieth century. Formal Roman Catholic Church control of Laval University, a Jesuit university, ceased in 1965 at a time when the institution and its administration were expanding greatly, and the faculty quickly began to resent the rule of bureaucrats over their affairs. Major changes had already been set in motion by the 1963 royal commission of inquiry into education in the province. Access to education was democratized, faculty was expanded, and budgetary economies and accountability were imposed. One result was the lowering of Laval's previously high faculty salaries. Unionization occurred, but in a haphazard fashion. There were several faculty concerns at Laval: the absence of collegial governance, the extremely precarious position of untenured faculty, and the lack of a fixed salary scale. A faculty union was established in early 1975 at Laval, but collective bargaining was slow, and a 108-day strike begain in September 1976. The sharing of power that the administration was willing to grant was minimal in real terms, even after the strike gained in intensity. A return-to-work agreement was signed on December 23, 1976, and the collective agreement was signed in January 1977. The contract runs until the end of May 1978, and represents a compromise on issues. A fixed salary schedule has been established, the faculty have been granted much greater job security, procedures for selection and hiring are spelled out in great detail, and the right of appeal of promotion and contract renewal decisions is specified. (MSE)

As part of a larger 1-year examination of the relationship between television viewing patterns and spontaneous play in nursery school, this study focuses on (1) the correlation between children's television viewing patterns in the home and their level of aggression in nursery school, and (2) specific factors within family settings that might determine this correlation. The major sources of data were daily logs kept by parents of the type and frequency of programs watched by their children over two-week periods four different times during the year; concurrent observations and ratings of overt physical aggression directed toward other children on property during free play in nursery school; and family interview questionnaires concerning daily routines in the home, patterns of discipline, leisure activities, TV viewing habits, and indications of family difficulties. Data from the parent logs and observations were based on a sample of 141 three- and four-year-olds, while the interviews were given to a subset of four groups of children (N=10 per group) who represented the extremes in both TV viewing and aggression. Correlations between weekly TV viewing and aggression (r=.35) were significant, even with the effects of socioeconomic status, ethnicity, and IQ partialed out. Further analyses suggest a causal direction from heavy TV viewing to aggressive behavior. Results of the family interview study indicated significant differences among the groups of extremes on the level of order and organization in the family, and on the degree of outside activities engaged in by the family. (Author/SS)

Two experiments tested a theory of information processing in metaphoric comprehension and appreciation. According to this theory, certain kinds of metaphors are based upon underlying analogies, and the processing components used to interpret these metaphors are highly similar to those used in the interpretation of analogies. A critical difference in the two kinds of information processing, however, is in the interaction of tenor and vehicle in the interpretation of metaphor; a comparable interaction does not occur in the interpretation of the domain (first half) and range (second half) of an analogy. In the first experiment, modeling of latencies for comprehending analogies and corresponding metaphors showed that information processing was similar, but not identical, in the two tasks. In the second experiment, comparisons between different metaphoric forms showed that the proposed theory could account for ratings of the aptness and comprehensibility of various metaphors, and that making more clear the identities of the terms of the analogy underlying a metaphor and the nature of the interaction between tenor and vehicle increased both the aptness and the comprehensibility of a metaphor. (Author)