Committee reports: Publications Committee

Abstract

Committee One: Anthropological Studies of School and Culture Committee One sent out a mailing this past year to report on last year's childcare conference, to solicit suggestions for this year's meeting, and to increase involvement. An informal session on creativity and children was held at the 1978 meetings. Briefly, anthropologists were encouraged to focus more on questions of creativity and giftedness. There are several ways they could make contributions: 1. Focusing on the ways all actors within the school setting a. define creativity and giftedness and i t s cultural and developmental sequence. b. norm behavior. c promote and develop an ideology for such definitions and behaviors. The groups should include children, teachers, aides, parents, administrators , site counc:ils/PTAs, school boards, and the larger society. Special attention should be paid to class and racial factors. 2. Studying child (and child-adult) interactions outside the classroom, as 3. Exploring psychological theories about right-left brain and verbal-in school yards. nonverbal dimensions to creativity. Committee One would like to solicit additional involvement in its broad charter and invites existing and prospective members to write to the Chair-persons about their interests. Committee Two: Cognitive and Linguistic Studies Committee Two's main activities this past year were the organization of a formal and an informal session at the AAA meetings in Los Angeles and the distribution of two newsletters. The formal session dealt with social competence in the classroom. This session, like a similar session held in 1977, presented a variety of approaches to a topic which has become increasingly important in our understanding of educational settings and processes. The informal session (Ethnographic and Sociolinguistic Research in Classrooms: A Researcher-Educator Dialogue) was a day-long workshop that brought together researchers and educators to explore and discuss current classroom research done from ethnographic and sociolinguistic perspectives. At the 1978 business meeting, Evelyn Jacob was reelected Cochairperson, and Susan Florio was elected as the new Cochairperson. During the coming year the committee plans to continue its newsletters and to organize one or two