The purpose of this study was to investigate how some ways of making sense of the world get privileged over others when teachers and students use specific educational films in specific learning environments. The methods of formalist and ideological film analysis are used to describe how educational films are distinct in their form and style from other types of film. These methodologies are then applied to educational dramatizations, using a sample of 60 films produced between 1930 and 1970 and housed at the American Archives of the Factual Film at Iowa State University. Analysis of the films is aimed at specifying where these films embody certain defining features of classical Hollywood films (CHC) and where they depart from this model. The assumption is made that differences between educational dramatizations and CHC are systematically related to the political, social, and educational purposes of educational films and of the institutions that produce and use them. Initial conclusions about characterization suggest that the way an educational film constructs and uses fictional characters invites the viewer to accept a specific definition of what counts as legitimate knowledge and where that knowledge can be found in our culture. (MES)