Against the backdrop of growing conflicts in Israeli society and concerns about its democratic character, the current curriculum guidelines and official textbook for civic education in Israel were set to offer a more inclusive civic education that would stress ideas such as pluralistic and democratic citizenship. However, this curriculum does not…

This qualitative case study illustrates barriers to informal argumentation and reasoned debate, i.e., "critical discourse," in online forums. The case is the computer conference of a 15-week, graduate-level humanities course offered entirely at a distance. Twelve students, all with families and careers, were enrolled in the course. We read all…

In this qualitative study, various professionals in specialized schools for students who are visually impaired provided information on assessment tools; how information was used to plan Individualized Education Programs; and their opinions on the reliability, validity, and usefulness of various measurements. The implications of the findings for…

Television teaches children gender-specific behaviors, attitudes, characteristics, and personality traits. Research indicates that by observing male and female characters on television, children learn to label certain characteristics and behaviors as masculine or feminine and to assign traditional sex-role stereotypes to careers. Content studies…

This study collected baseline data on the nature of elementary and middle-grade students' reading engagement level, locus of control, and stage of ethnic identity development (based on J. A. Banks' typology of ethnic identity), and to determine the extent to which selected literature and the instructional interaction in these students' classrooms…

A study examined, through comparison, The "New York Times'" coverage of the 1995 women's and men's National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) basketball tournaments. The study sought to answer three questions: (1) Does the "Times" frame the women's event as unimportant?; (2) If so, how?; and (3) What does this say about…

Evaluating and selecting the appropriate software is a very important component of success in using multimedia systems in both educational and corporate settings. Computer-mediated multimedia (CMM) is the integration of two or more communication media, controlled or manipulated by the user via a computer, to present information. CMM can be…

The Minorities and Communication section of the proceedings contains the following 10 papers: "A Content Analysis of Advertising Techniques in Mass Market and African-American Magazine Advertisements" (Jan S. Slater and others); "Political and Racial Adversaries: Southern Black Elected Officials and the Press" (Daniel Riffe and…

Through content analysis of interviews based on a class art activity, a study of 15 first-graders investigated children's perceptions of a good story. The story was based on children's interpretation of artwork they had created. Through the use of content analysis, three major themes of the children's stories were identified: (1) animals as main…

Based on the findings of a content analysis of representative literature on educational technology, this report examines trends in educational technology from October 1, 1994 through September 30, 1995. Eight trends for 1995 are identified and discussed: (1) computers are pervasive in schools and higher education institutions and virtually every…

A content analysis was conducted of think-aloud protocols of a teacher who used the Mathematics Assessment Questionnaire (MAQ) to explore the mathematical dispositions of her students. The teacher used the MAQ four times over a 2-year period with geometry students at various levels. On the first occasion, the teacher used a direct instruction…

The Mass Media Effects section of this collection of conference presentations contains the following 13 papers: "The Nature of the Public's Objections to Television Programs: An Examination of Third-Person Effects" (Guy E. Lometti and others); "An Examination of the Relationship of Structural Pluralism, News Role and Source Use with…

This paper, written for a National Archives staff training course discusses the use of computers in the classroom as reflective of the larger social trend toward an increasing dependency on automated systems to assist business and government in their efforts to more effectively manage and retrieve information. The paper also demonstrates the…

Television programming has long been recognized as an effective method of educating children. This paper investigated the degree of exposure an educational children's program, Sesame Street, gave to female and male characters and the extent to which these characters were stereotypically portrayed. Children's Television Workshop produces 110…

This study examines the representation of Western Europe, particularly Germany, in world history, world geography, western civilization, and U.S. history textbooks used in U.S. social studies classrooms. The goal of the study was to identify avoidable imbalances in the representations of Germany and Europe, point to areas in which the portrayals…