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There is a long tradition of academic interest in the worlds of work and family. However, there was scant attention paid to the linkages between these two worlds until the mid 1970s. In the United States, the 1977 publication of Kanter's monograph, "Work and family in the United States: A critical review and agenda for research and policy," sparked a surge in scholarship focused on the relationships between work and family issues. Academics in diverse fields and disciplines--from child & family studies to economics--began to research and write about the experiences of working families, employers' response to the work-family priorities of their employees, and public sector policies that affect the decisions both of working families as well as those made by employers. This module introduces students to the multi-disciplinary work-family field of study. The module's contents provide information related to: (1) The diversity of contemporary families; (2) Changing forms of work; (3) Concepts related to the work-family interface; (4) Work-family issues as important contemporary concerns; and (5) The implications of work and family experiences for the quality of life at home and at the workplace. The contents of the module are appropriate either for: (1) The first one or two sessions of a work-family course taught in social science departments; and (2) Specific sessions of a survey course, such as the sociology of family, which focuses on a range of topics, including an introduction to work-family issues. (Contains 4 online resources.) [This paper was prepared with the help of Judi C. Casey, Karen Corday, and Christina Matz. For Modules 2, 3 and 4 of this curriculum guide, see ED536753, ED536766, and ED536752, respectively.]

The approaches used for reading instruction in the United States and in the People's Republic of China are different and incompatible. In China, English reading is taught intensively, through close-reading or detailed oral analysis of brief texts and with great attention to individual words and phrases. This "bottom-up" processing style, which emphasizes lexical, morphological, and syntactic skills, neglects "top-down" strategies, including proposition-making, integration of ideas, and inference-making. American reading instruction is based on current theory and research focusing on processing speed and reading comprehension, treating reading as a silent process, and emphasizing "top-down" skills. Experience in English classes in China suggests that the close-reading approach, which may reflect cognitive processes needed to decode ideographs, produces some unexpected positive results in language training and analysis, especially in the written, or more academic, form of English. However, the lack of training in speed and comprehension produces Chinese readers of English who are unprepared for study in the United States. The optimum approach to reading instruction might maintain the current emphasis on global comprehension while incorporating close-reading into the overall process, combining the most effective aspects of both techniques. (MSE)