Published in 1913, The Effect of Promotion Rates on School Efficiency presents findings that illustrate the great importance of small differences in promotion rates in education, particularly the degree to which children are trained in habits of success and failure.
LEONARD P. AYRES was director of the Division of Education at the Russell Sage Foundation.
This article offers an evaluation of the Binet-Simon Measuring Scale for Intelligence, a 1908 series of tests developed by French psychologists for the diagnosis of the level of intelligence of children. The scale had widespread application at the time, with minor variations to adapt to the needs of American children. By assessing each test and determining a number of flaws, such as overemphasis on “puzzle tests,” the author argues that, beyond small adjustments, an entirely new measuring scale is needed to test intellectual performance.
LEONARD P. AYRES was director of the Division of Education at the Russell Sage Foundation.
Recent research has shown that poverty leads to profound shifts in the mindset and psychology of individuals. Living in contexts of scarcity, not having enough of a critical resource, focuses our thinking on the scarce resource but distracts from other things. Juggling poverty, or any other form of resource scarcity, burdens our mental capacities and leaves less mind for other concerns. As a result, the psychology that emerges in contexts of scarcity has profound implications for what kind of interventions might or might not work.
In the course of its television lifetime, "Sesame Street" has taught alphabet-related skills to hundreds of thousands of preschool children. But the program may have attracted more of its regular viewers from relatively affluent homes in which the parents were better educated. Analyzing and reevaluating data drawn from several sources, principally the Educational Testing Service's evaluations of "Sesame Street," the authors of this book open fresh lines of inquiry into how much economically disadvantaged children learned from viewing the series for six months and into whether the program is widening the gap that separates the academic achievement of disadvantaged preschoolers from that of their more affluent counterparts. The authors define as acute dilemma currently facing educational policymakers: what positive results are achieved when a large number of children learn some skills at a younger age if this absolute increase in knowledge is associated with an increase in the difference between social groups?
THOMAS D. COOK is Joan and Sarepta Harrison Chair of Ethics and Justice and professor of sociology, psychology, and education and social policy at Northwestern University.
Much of the existing research on inter-group conflict has focused on the causes and consequences of bias and discrimination of ethnic and racial minorities by majority white groups. Scholars have paid comparatively less attention to how changes in dominant-group members’ perceptions about their in-group, and the in-group’s position in society, affect inter-group behavior and policy preferences.
Now considered a classic in the field, this book first called attention to what Kanter has referred to as the "myth of separate worlds." Rosabeth Moss Kanter was one of the first to argue that the assumes separation between work and family was a myth and that research must explore the linkages between these two roles.
ROSABETH MOSS KANTER holds the Ernest L. Arbuckle Professorship at Harvard Business School, where she specializes in strategy, innovation, and leadership for change.
Discusses the intellectual processes involved in social planning. Professor Kahn provides critical tools for the analysis of the planning process, and shows what social planning is and can be. Clarifying the major phases in the planning process, he shows how planning can succeed or fail at any one of these stages. He examined planners in their various roles: as "neutral" technicians and as advocates, as representatives of interest groups and as public officials.
The book describes both the social aspects of planning and the relationship between social and physical plans.
ALFRED J. KAHN was professor of Social Policy and Planning at the Columbia University School of Social Work.
What determines the systematic allocation of status, power, and economic reward among lawyers? What kind of social structure organizes lawyers’ roles in the bar and in the larger community?
As Heinz and Laumann convincingly demonstrate, the legal profession is stratified primarily by the character of the clients served, not by the type of legal service rendered. In fact, the distinction between corporate and individual clients divides the bar into two remarkably separate hemispheres. Using data from extensive personal interviews with nearly 800 Chicago lawyers, the authors show that lawyers who serve one type of client seldom serve the other. Furthermore, lawyers’ political, ethno-religious, and social ties are very likely to correspond to those of their client types. Greater deference is consistently shown to corporate lawyers, who seem to acquire power by association with their powerful clients.
Heinz and Laumann also discover that these two “hemispheres” of the legal profession are not effectively integrated by intraprofessional organizations such as the bar, courts, or law schools. The fact that the bar is structured primarily along extraprofessional lines raises intriguing questions about the law and the nature of professionalism, questions addressed in a provocative and far-ranging final chapter.
This volume, published jointly with the American Bar Foundation, offers a uniquely sophisticated and comprehensive analysis of lawyers’ professional lives. It will be of exceptional importance to sociologists and others interested in the legal profession, in the general study of professions, and in social stratification and the distribution of power.
JOHN P. HEINZ is Professor of law and Urban Affairs at Northwestern University and Executive Director of the American Bar Foundation.
In recent years, increasing concern has been voiced about the nature and extent of human experimentation and its impact on the investigator, subject, science, and society. This casebook represents the first attempt to provide comprehensive materials for studying the human experimentation process.
Through case studies from medicine, biology, psychology, sociology, and law—as well as evaluative materials from many other disciplines—Dr. Katz examines the problems raised by human experimentation from the vantage points of each of its major participants—investigator, subject, professions, and state. He analyzes what kinds of authority should be delegated to these participants in the formulation, administration, and review of the human experimentation process. Alternative proposals, from allowing investigators a completely free hand to imposing centralized governmental control, are examined from both theoretical and practical perspectives.
The conceptual framework of Experimentation with Human Beings is designed to facilitate not only the analysis of such concepts as “harm,” “benefit,” and “informed consent,” but also the exploration of the problems raised by man’s quest for knowledge and mastery, his willingness to risk human life, and his readiness to delegate authority to professionals and rely on their judgment.
JAY KATZ is the Elizabeth K. Dollard Professor Emeritus of Law, Medicine, and Psychoanalysis at the Yale Law School.
