In this exploration of the social context of reading and writing in pre-industrial England, David Cressy tackles important questions about the limits of participation in the mainstream of early modern society. To what extent could people at different social levels share in political, religious, literary and cultural life; how vital was the ability to read and write; and how widely distributed were these skills? Using a combination of humanist and social-scientific methods, Dr Cressy provides a detailed reconstruction of the profile of literacy in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England, looking forward to the eighteenth century and also making comparisons with other European societies.

Social Structure and Behavior: Essays in Honor of William Hamilton Sewell is a collection of 16 essays dealing with the social psychological aspects of schooling and achievement, social stratification and mobility, measurements and methods, and social structures and wellbeing. The collection discusses the political dimension of stratification, the results of observation of first-graders in their reading group assignments against their social background, and stereotyping practices held by dominant groups of society. Anther papers use a causal model to analyze occupational status and earnings of Cuban exiles in the U.S.; other authors discuss the effects of institutionalization of formal employment in Brazil, and propose a revision of the Duncan Scale by a more comprehensive set of occupational prestige scale. The book also analyzes measurements of ranked preferences using a single latent factor behind the ranked items. One authors points that some sociological terms can be misleading in propounding a sound theory when these terms themselves confound what they are supposed to correlate. The text also addresses the fundamental problems concerning welfare that include order, collective action, and consensus. This collection of essays can interest social workers, sociologists, psychologists, and researchers involved in community development.

Spoken Word and Social Practice: Orality in Europe (1400-1700) addresses historians and literary scholars. It aims to recapture oral culture in a variety of literary and non-literary sources, tracking the echo of women’s voices, on trial, or bantering and gossiping in literary works, and recapturing those of princes and magistrates, townsmen, villagers, mariners, bandits, and songsmiths. Almost all medieval and early modern writing was marked by the oral. Spoken words and turns of phrase are bedded in writings, and the mental habits of a speaking world shaped texts. Writing also shaped speech; the oral and the written zones had a porous, busy boundary. Cross-border traffic is central to this study, as is the power, range, utility, and suppleness of speech. Contributors are Matthias Bähr, Richard Blakemore, Michael Braddick, Rosanna Cantavella, Thomas V. Cohen, Gillian Colclough, Jan Dumolyn, Susana Gala Pellicer, Jelle Haemers, Marcus Harmes, Elizabeth Horodowich, Carolina Losada, Virginia Reinburg, Anne Regent-Susini, Joseph T. Snow, Sonia Suman, Lesley K. Twomey and Liv Helene Willumsen.

This timely book looks at social literacy within the revised National Curriculum which places an obligation on schools and teachers to promote social cohesion, community involvement and a sense of social responsibility among young people. Social Literacy, Citizenship Education and the National Curriculum is an introduction to the social purposes and aims contained in the revised National Curriculum. It provides the theory behind the movement for social literacy as well as providing information for teachers, lecturers and policy makers on putting the government's ideas into practice.

First Published in 1996. This first of its kind Encyclopaedia charts the influence of philosophic ideas that have had the greatest influence on education from Ancient Greece to the present. It covers classical thinkers as Plato, Augustine, Hypatia, Locke and Rousseau, as well as recent figures such as Montessori, Heldegger, Du Bois and Dewey. It illuminates time-hounded ideas and concepts such as idealism, practical wisdom, scholasticism, tragedy and truth, as well as modern constructs as critical theory, existentialism, phenomenology, Marxism and post-Colonialism. The coverage consists of 228 articles by 184 contributors who survey the full spectrum of the philosophy of education.

Harvey Graff's pioneering study presents a new and original interpretation of the place of literacy in nineteenth-century society and culture. Based upon an intensive comparative historical analysis, employing both qualitative and quantitative techniques, and on a wide range of sources, The Literacy Myth reevaluates the role typically assigned to literacy in historical scholarship, cultural understanding, economic development schemes, and social doctrines and ideologies.

The skyrocketing Arab oil revenues of the 1970s have triggered tremendous socioeconomic forces in the Arab world. Observers have extensively studied the financial and geopolitical aspects of Arab oil, but generally have ignored the human and social repercussions stimulated by the oil wealth. This book challenges the commonly accepted view of the im