This study examines current understanding of the experience of Puerto Rican migrant women as they cope with a new environment. Acculturation theory is analyzed and found limited in its conceptualization of migration as confined largely to the individual. An interdisciplinary review of the literature is used to explain the process of adaptation as an interplay of personal and social factors. The personal and social functions of ethnicity and gender are found critical in migrant women's search for economic advancement. A demographic account of the experience of Puerto Ricans in the United States is provided. A review of empirical studies suggests that being head of household is a significant factor keeping Island born Puerto Rican women out of the labor force. This economic disadvantage is seen to affect the process of acculturation, and reciprocally, acculturation is seen as a requirement for labor force participation. A multidimensional framework is developed which explains that the exclusion of these women from the labor force is rooted in this country's issues of gender and ethnicity. Educational implications are discussed and suggestions for public policy are included. Future research must investigate the effect of prevailing social influences on migrants which place assimilation as their most desirable status. Acculturation studies must focus on the interrelated nature of ethnicity and gender and incorporate into their analyses the effect of socioeconomic resources on adjustment. The experience of migrant Puerto Rican women heads of household must be further examined and new methods derived to quantify their status by means of the available census procedures. A longitudinal national study of the experience of Puerto Ricans in the United States would provide significant interdisciplinary impact.

The purpose of this study was to examine how a select group of adults of African-American/Euro-American heritage came to choose or develop a sense of racial identity. The seven participants were women and men who ranged in age from twenty-one to fifty-nine, and who had chosen Black, White, or Mixed racial identities. Utilizing in-depth phenomenological interviewing, participants were asked how their life experiences had led them to choose a particular racial identity, how they experienced the world in light of their chosen identity, and the meaning which they made of their choice of identity given their actual biological racial heritage. The data was presented as in-depth profiles taken from transcripts of the interviews for each participant. In addition, themes which emerged when participants were compared within and across chosen racial identity groups, gender groups, and age groups were highlighted. The factors which were seen as having the most influence on choice of racial identity were past and current cultural affiliations, early experiences and socialization, and physical appearance. Additional factors which played a lesser role in racial identity development included the nature and extent of individual political experiences or orientation, the nature of social values within a given historical period, the biological racial heritage of the individual, and a participant's sense of spirituality and connection to other social identities such as gender, religion, age, and ethnic identity. An individual's awareness of him or herself in relation to race and racism as outlined in existing racial identity development literature was described as another factor which could be utilized to understand choice of racial identity. Each of these individual factors was defined and arranged into a conceptual framework. The interconnections between some of the factors, such as culture and early socialization, were also explored. The experiences of participants were compared with the processes of identity development outlined in select works on Black, White, and Bi-racial populations. The dissertation also presented a number of recommendations for individuals who worked with bi-racial people.

This descriptive study presents strategies and recommendations that, if adopted and implemented effectively, can lead to a significant increase in the acknowledgment of the importance of vocational education in Massachusetts' Black communities, as well as lead to an increase in the number of minority youth expressing interest in vocational technical education. This will lead to prospects for change. A closer look will be taken at the quality of education being offered in various vocational technical schools and programs especially by minority parents, educators, and civic leaders. The pressure for quality in vocational education will be very great in Massachusetts' Black communities; this means that educators, civic leaders, and parents will begin to ask more and harder questions regarding decisionmaking, allocation and use of resources, and the quality and profile of the teaching profession in vocational technical education in Massachusetts. An important expectation to be noted here, based on what some union officials have stated about vocational education and Blacks, is that the union community wants to cooperate with minority leaders and parents who are seeking to make vocational education work for their youth. This study began with the theme that vocational technical education can be a creative and exciting "public policy glue" tying together demography, the economic needs of Massachusetts, and the educational needs of Black communities. It raised the awareness of the importance of vocational education in minority communities through various forums and meetings; it brought together a network of individuals and organizations which could be the basis of renewed interest and attention to the role that vocational education can play in the economic development of minority communities, and in the improvement of the quality and relevance of education in these communities. Finally, the study resulted in several concrete strategies and recommendations which, if implemented effectively, could lay the foundation necessary to guarantee a significant presence of Blacks in the world of vocational education in Massachusetts.

Filial piety has been a central concept in guiding Chinese thought on childrearing. Unfortunately, the U. S. research literature has used instruments that do not give adequate attention to this concept. The purpose of this study was to examine harmony and conflict between generations among Taiwanese families both in Taiwan and in the United States. In this study, two key dependent variables, parental attitudes toward childrearing and toward filial piety, were chosen. Comparisons of the two key variables between paternal grandfathers and fathers as well as maternal grandmothers and mothers among Taiwanese families were presented. A survey was conducted both in Taiwan and in the United States. Two attitudinal scales, the Child Training Scale and the Filial Piety Scale, designed by Chinese researchers David Y. F. Ho and his colleague were selected. The fathers of six-year-old boys as well as the mothers of six-year-old girls from two Chinese school programs in Massachusetts, U. S. A. were surveyed. Paternal grandfathers and fathers of six-year-old boys as well as maternal grandmothers and mothers of six-year-old girls among three kindergartens and two elementary schools in Kaohsiung, Taiwan were also investigated. A total of 407 copies for the Taiwanese sample and 29 copies for the US sample were collected. Parental attitudes toward the Child Training Scale and the Filial Piety Scale were highly correlated. Difference of means for the three maternal groups on the two Scales was highly significant. Comparison of means on the FP Scale between the grandparents and the parents was significant in the Taiwanese sample. In addition, difference of means between the parents in the Taiwanese sample and the Taiwanese parents in the US sample was significant on both the CT Scale and the FP Scale. Associations between the respondents' education, family structure, occupation or religion and their attitudes toward the two scales for the Taiwanese were also discussed.

This dissertation describes an experimental project to devise forums for “civil” public discussion. It is an analysis of the project in terms of the Coordinated Management of Meaning theory, and discusses implications for the de-escalation of tension and the management of conflicts where passions are unusually strong and the positions taken by disputants are particularly intractable. There has been an interesting effort to improve the quality of public discourse at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. The usual form of educational discussion is the ‘debate’ and true to form, the administration called for debates to be held in order to allow informed and civil discussants to educate the student body on the issues surrounding events in the Middle East during the mid-eighties. But a turning point was made when The Kaleidoscope Project was announced as “not a debate,” but as “an experimental forum for the non-adversarial public discussion of intractable disputes: to ‘discuss the undiscussible’.” Through the late eighties and into the early nineties, Kaleidoscope forums were held and the format refined. Subsequently, “people of good will” on the campus have attempted to increase the opportunities for students and faculty to engage in non-adversarial forums, increasingly citing a perceived need for dialogue. “Dialogue” has become the watchword for educational and mediated conversations. The subject of this study is The Black/Jewish/Other Video Exchange Project which allowed self-identifying student members of three groups, “Blacks”, “Jews”, and “Others”, to use videotaped interviews to “enter a dialogue” or—as the BJO Committee referred to it, to have a “distanced conversation”. The dissertation holds the premise that different forms of communication construct different ways of being human, and thus the communication process constructs the specific forms and outcomes of conflicts in human systems. I hypothesize that interventions designed to produce dialogue rather than debate or dispute are rooted in differences in cultural constructions of “conflict” and “dialogue” and that the way people communicate rather than what they think contributes more significantly to the form of the conflict. Successful conflict management is a matter of second order change; the success or failure of peacemaking interventions depends upon the maintenance or the collapse of the interventive control of contextual reconstruction. The dissertation provides a conversation analysis of the videotapes from the BJO Video Exchange Project in order to advance a deeper understanding of cross-cultural “dialogue” and the characteristics of “transformative discourse.”

This dissertation addresses two central debates in the scholarship on Black families: the disorganization versus superorganization debate seeking to characterize the racial differences in family organization, and the culture versus structure debate seeking to specify the causes of those differences. In combination, these debates produce four main approaches—cultural deficiency, cultural resiliency, structural resiliency, and structural destruction. Focusing on giving, receiving, and exchanging kin support as measures of family integration and using the second wave of the National Survey of Families and Households, this dissertation empirically examines these four approaches and in the process challenges the assumptions entailed in these debates. First, it suggests that neither the superorganization nor the disorganization theorists accurately capture racial distinctions in kin support. Black and White families differ in the type of support rather than in its overall prevalence. Blacks are more involved in instrumental and child care help; Whites report greater involvement in financial and emotional support. Further, gender is crucial for understanding racial differences: Black and White men are very much alike, while there are many differences among women. Racial differences also vary by kin type: Whites are more involved in intergenerational support; Blacks are more involved in support transfers with siblings and other relatives. Second, this dissertation suggests that both structure and culture are important in understanding racial differences and similarities in kin support, although structure is more important for the creation of racial differences. Blacks' structural disadvantage reduces their support involvement, producing a lower prevalence of financial and emotional support. This clearly supports the structural destruction theory. The data, however, also offer partial support for the structural resiliency approach: The lower SES of Blacks increases their instrumental help through its effects on family structure. In terms of culture, this study found that cultural values of Blacks boost their kin support, which supports the cultural resiliency approach. In contrast, the data offer no support for the cultural deficiency approach. Based on these findings, this dissertation argues that the general either/or terms of these debates are problematic and emphasizes the need for synthetic rather than dichotomous approaches to discussing Black families.

Here I am Now! was the title immigrant and refugee undergraduate students and local refugee community youth gave to their participatory photography installation displayed at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. This exhibit was the culmination of students' participation in a series of alternative community service-learning (CSL) courses offered through CIRCLE (Center for Immigrant and Refugee Community Leadership and Empowerment). Here first-generation undergraduate students mentored neighboring Vietnamese and Cambodian refugee youth using photography and art and applying community development education principles and techniques. While community service-learning pedagogy has become an established educational practice on most U.S. universities and colleges today, little research has been conducted viewing the educational impact of community service-learning pedagogy on diverse student populations. The majority of the scholarship in this field focuses on the experiences of white middle-class students engaged in service-learning relationships with communities from unfamiliar and different socio-cultural, racial, ethic and economic backgrounds (Dunlap, 1998). This dissertation presents a different perspective. Here I examine how immigrant and refugee undergraduate students understood and made meaning of their participation in a community service-learning experience with youth from familiar and similar ethnocultural contexts. This model valued participants' common cultural assets, highlighted the immigrant and refugee experience, and attended to specific local refugee community needs. To answer my research questions I applied critical ethnographic approaches and analyzed student narratives (interviews, journal entries, reflection papers, poetry and photography) to better understand participants' community-service learning experiences. Through the prisms of three educational learning theories I review the university context, highlight aspects of the situation under study and proceed to build an emerging framework for CSL pedagogy with diverse communities. These theories include; experiential and critical pedagogy, situated learning theory, and the anthropological concept, funds of knowledge, as guides toward developing culturally relevant CSL curriculum with immigrant and refugee learners. Through student narratives, I demonstrate that critical CSL curriculum and service that emphasize peer learning and strategic and cultural resources (funds of knowledge), provide diverse undergraduate students with alternative and creative spaces of critique and possibility in their higher education and community service-learning experiences.

The purpose of this study was to understand how a predominately White school conceptualized and implemented multicultural education. Presently, multicultural education is discussed in the contexts of urban or suburban school settings in which there are students from a variety of racial and ethnic backgrounds. Little has been written about multicultural, particularly anti-racist/anti-bias, education in mostly White rural areas. The study was conducted over a five-month period from February 1993 through June 1993 with informal visits in the fall and spring of 1994. The data is based on observations, documents, and interviews with teachers, aides, staff, and parents. Questions addressed definitions of multicultural education, successes and barriers encountered in the process, and suggestions for further improvement. The section on definitions of multicultural education includes eight categories: Accepting and Respecting Self and Others, Learning About Self from Others, Developing Critical Thinking Skills, Addressing Issues of Bias, Learning Through Contact, Standing Up for Justice, Going Through the Process, and Integrating Throughout the Curriculum. Factors contributing to the school becoming more multicultural were: a strong and open staff, an in-depth, interdisciplinary curriculum, a school-wide practice of inclusion, a small school with strong parent involvement, and a supportive community located relatively close to a university town. Factors that hindered the school from becoming more multicultural included: an ambivalence about the role and significance of race and racism, a lack of agreement about who ought to provide leadership and how, a lack of a permanent forum for discussion and guidance as the school moves through controversial issues, and a state of constant change which made planning difficult. Despite these barriers, the school community's capacity and commitment to learn and grow creatively in the face of such challenges suggested a strong foundation for the life-long process of becoming a multicultural school.

The purpose of this dissertation was to examine nuptial patterns among Chinese and Japanese American women. Specifically, this study compared the prevalence of and reasons for differential rates of marriage and timing of first marriage among non-Latino white, Chinese and Japanese American women. Using 1980 PUMS census data, the marriage patterns of the three racial-ethnic groups are examined. Comparisons are also made between the native born and foreign born in each racial-ethnic group. Native born Asian American women are found to have higher rates of non-marriage than their foreign born counterparts or native white women. An accelerated time model also is utilized to estimate the net effects of birth cohort, education, English proficiency, and mixed ancestry on the waiting time to first marriage for each racial-ethnic group. As expected, education significantly increases the time to first marriage among the racial-ethnic groups of women. The final section of the dissertation compares the household and socioeconomic characteristics of the never and ever married respondents. Never married women are found to have higher educations, incomes, and occupational statuses than ever married women. Native Asian American women are more frequently employed than native white women, regardless of marital status.

In this dissertation, I examine the ways white women teachers construct whiteness as they teach students of primarily Asian, African and Latina/o heritage. The primary purpose of this study is to conduct a preliminary examination of how white women construct whiteness as an embodied racial identity in educational contexts. More specifically, my goal is to examine how whiteness is constructed through narrative and to critique how the constructions of whiteness perpetuate and/or resist the discourse of white supremacy. To frame the study of teacher narratives, I draw on theory from critical pedagogy, communication education, interpersonal/intercultural communication and critical cultural studies. Furthermore, I employ a critical-interpretive methodology to examine how teachers construct their personhood within complex relationships of power. This methodology is practiced through the use of three methods: Interactive classroom observations, dialogic interviewing and narrative analysis. Five women teaching at a Southern California high school acted as "co-researchers" during this study. Herein, I interpret their narratives in order to understand how whiteness is constructed within the stories each teacher tells about her personhood/identity, the stories teachers tell about the personhood/identity of the students she teaches and how each teacher accounts for her relationship and the relationship of her students to the social world. Titular terms include whiteness, personhood/identity, narrative, critical pedagogy, communication education, intercultural communication and critical cultural studies.