Community Psychology and Full-Service Schools in Different Cultures

Increased global communication and changing national priorities have accelerated American and European psychologists' search for ways to improve their science by adapting ideas from non-Western societies. At the same time, psychologists in Asia, Africa, and Latin America are debating how to incorporate the best of Western psychology without betraying their cultural values and identities. Most representative of this new approach in the United States is community psychology, a contemporary example of which is the School of the Future project ( W. H. Holtzman, 1992 ) launched in 1990 in ethnically different neighborhoods of 4 Texas cities. This project involves the development and evaluation of experimental full-service schools. Key features of the program are described. Strategies for psychologists working on similar social issues of human development in diverse cultures and different countries are presented.