This study employs the Solomon Four-Group Design to measure student knowledge of the United States government and student knowledge of current events at the beginning of a U.S. government course and at the end. In both areas, knowledge improves significantly. Regarding knowledge of the U.S. government, both males and females improve at similar…

Presents design, collected data, and findings of study that deals with students' exposure and improving information-gathering procedures on students' knowledge bases in political science. (Author/ND)

Discusses a study which measured the effects of mass media-related instruction about political topics in elementary and secondary schools on students' political knowledge. Findings indicated that mass media, particularly television, does influence student political knowledge and that, consequently, educators should have an input into television…

The purpose of this paper is to use data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress to describe changes in performance within the subject area of social studies and citizenship education. The items from the citizenship and social studies national assessments illustrate that trends over time are not uniform within these subject areas. The…

Performance of rural 13-year-olds on the 1971-1972 social studies assessment by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) were reviewed in terms of three major exercise themes. Performance on skill exercises revealed rural strengths in source selection and human affairs insights, but weaknesses in reading maps and graphs. Fewer than…