Discusses the importance of television in history and citizenship education in Soviet schools. Describes studies dealing with the effects of mass communications media on the educational process. Urges the integration of subject matter conveyed to students via television with that acquired in the classroom to foster development of theoretical…

Sharing information orally is an important skill that public speaking classes teach well. However, the author's students report that they do not often see informative lectures, demonstrations, presentations, or discussions that follow the structures and formats of an informative speech as it is discussed in their textbooks. As a result, the author…

The purpose of this qualitative study was to examine the impact upon a group of ten early childhood inservice educators of a collaborative professional development course in early literacy development presented using the tools of narrative and reflection. The study considered impact in terms of teachers' beliefs, values, practice, and sense of…

A study investigated the emerging journal-writing skills of 16 monolingual Spanish-speaking Mexican Americans and 10 monolingual English-speaking first-graders in San Diego County, California, in a whole-language, two-way bilingual classroom. The research looked for developmental stages in writing in the primary language, similarities or…

By building up the confidence of student writers, writing teachers hope to reduce the hostility and anxiety so often found in authoritarian introductory college composition classes. Process oriented writing theory implicitly defines confidence as a wholly personal quality resulting from students' discovery that they do have "something to…

Each of the 31 chapters which comprise this volume reviews the state of the art in a specific area of communications research. The chapters are grouped into three sections, the first of which focuses upon the basic communication process. An introduction to the concept of a communication system and to the phenomena of language and nonverbal…

Sports programming plays a significant role in the media messages that American boys receive today. To explore the messages that sports programming presents to its audience, this report relates the findings of a study that analyzed a representative selection of sports programs and their accompanying commercials; also presented are findings from a…

Discusses the relationship between the prominence of themes of the literate gentry woman in Chinese fiction and the rise of women poets. Examines later Japanese fiction to find influences of the woman reader and of earlier Chinese works. Explores the scholar-beauty novels, women as warriors, female martyrdom, and the equating of virtue with…

Arranged by subject categories and authors, the more than 4,400 abstracts in this cumulative index provide information on doctoral dissertations and master's theses in the field of journalism. The 28 subject areas are as follows: advertising; audience analysis; communication and national development; communication theory, process, and effects;…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 16 titles deal with the following topics: children's reactions to television commercials and their associated products; an observational instructional analysis of "Sesame Street"; the effects of feedback in televised…

In 1997, the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) published the first edition of "Preventing Drug Use among Children and Adolescents: A Research-Based Guide" to share the latest NIDA-funded prevention research findings with parents, educators, and community leaders. The guide introduced the concept of "research-based prevention" with questions…

In 1995, the National Science Foundation (NSF) initiated the Local Systemic Change through Teacher Enhancement program. The initiative's primary goal is to improve instruction in science, mathematics, and technology through teacher professional development within whole schools or school districts. NSF funded the first cohort of Local Systemic…

Examines the complex interactive set of conditions that influence artistic production and frame the way interpretations are constructed. Uses a software system to index qualitative material (interview transcripts, field notes, reviews, and commentary) and analyzes this material in terms of emerging themes. Includes comments from the artists. (MJP)

National controversy erupted when students at a public university invited a man who was on death row for killing a police officer to speak at their graduation ceremony. (Contains 1 note.)

A 13-day workshop was conducted in Nigeria to train 60 community development workers in the educational use of popular theater for community-based adult education. Key goals were conscientization (a gradual learning process in which people look critically at their social situation to gain deeper understanding of the root causes of their problems)…