REVIEW ESSAY

Rednecks, Eggheads and Blackfellas: a study of racial power and intimacy in Australia. By Gillian Cowlishaw Sydney: Allen and Unwin. 1999. Pp. xix + 352. Figures, Maps, Photos & Index $35     

Lebens‐Geschichte ‐ Wissenschafts‐Geschichte. Vom Nutzen der Biographie für Geschichtswissenschaft und Wissenschaftsgeschichte

Biography as a genre of historiography had been dismissed for some years, criticized for being conservative, resistant to theoretical approaches, and hostile to methodological innovations. But the predominance of a historiography devoted to structures, functions, and statistics has, however, led to a renewed interest in the human factor in history. This paper argues that the pluralism of methods and theories which has emerged thereafter reopened the case for an innovative biography, thus facilitating the convergence of general history and the history of science.     

English-Language Assistance Programs, English-Skill Acquisition, and the Academic Progress of High School Language Minority Students

Utilizing the 1988–1992 surveys from the Restricted-Use National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988, I find that language minority students who received English-language assistance (ELA) programs beyond the third grade reported lower English-skill acquisition and made smaller academic progress in high school than their peers. Moreover, while the type of high school ELA program (e.g., bilingual education) differently affected scholastic outcomes, students in such programs did not surpass their counterparts in monolingual-English classes on average.