Cazden reflects on theoretical and sociopolitical origins of Hymes's construct of communicative competence in events occurring just before and after 1960 in the U.S. She comments on Hymes's emphasis on competence not as abstract systemic potential of a language, but as capability located in individual persons; and she explores competence as both…

These comments, by a Singaporean and an American, focus on four themes: roles of anthropologists; the pedagogy of culture; challenges in combining Indigenous and mainstream epistemologies; and reciprocal influences between social and political contexts, and struggles for Indigenous education and self-determination.

Productive language is where both recent innovative efforts and the most severe problems are. Two problems to be answered are decisions about the assessment situation and about focal aspects of communicative competence to be assessed in them. Two examples of current work are inserted from papers prepared by the staff of the High/Scope Educational…

Reviews the contributions of anthropology in educational experiments designed to help educationally and socially disadvantaged children. Cautions that educational psychology will retain its hegemony in educational research, unless anthropology is able to show how educational failure can be reversed. (GC)