A study of the role of the attention construct in the process of transforming specific newspaper and television media content into political knowledge involved a survey of 71 undergraduate students in an introductory journalism course. A review of the literature had revealed that the use of the attention construct had been infrequent in mass media…

A study was undertaken to explore the power structure in a Southwestern community of 93,000 and to determine which elements in that power structure had the most influence in a local school bond referendum. The data for the study were collected using two techniques. First, a panel of knowledgeable community members identified 85 politically…

Defining political culture as a fundamental, culturally important value system that forms a context in which media content judgments and other professional behaviors can be described or evaluated in a meaningful way, this paper analyses two minority press systems as they relate to their political culture contexts. The two systems are the black…

Lifelong learning has great political and social implications for formal educational institutions. Imported from Europe, lifelong education stresses education for all ages offered at the time the learner needs the competencies being taught and supplied by the society as a whole rather than just from the schools. The forces that produce the growing…

This preliminary report investigates federally funded childhood service programs mediated by state agencies in Michigan in order to uncover possible patterns of differential funding access for various client populations. Social services, public health and education programs were studied statewide to determine their number and nature, funding level…

Although the Shah of Iran should be admired for his efforts to use education to deal with formidable social challenges, his goal of producing a modern state in a single generation was unrealistic. Entrenched traditional values and unpredicted economic changes such as the need in 1977 to slow down Iran's rate of growth in the face of runaway…

The variable nature of literacy is discussed in chapter one of this paper, including problems of arbitrary standards, instruments, and criteria. In the second chapter, some of the historical roots of the concept of literacy are traced both to show how the concept of literacy evolved and to show how literacy has always been closely tied to the…

The enthusiasm for competency testing poses a contradiction, for it comes at a time when questions and criticisms are being increasingly raised about tests and their use. In three sections, this paper explores the competency testing movement: 1) main features and basic issues in the competency testing movements; 2) observations on the politics of…

"Where the money is and what you'll need to do to get it," form the central theme of this citizen's guide to rural development. Designed to assist a community leader interested in implementing a development project, the guide concentrates on the sources which most frequently fund rural community development projects, i.e., the grant and…

The paper discusses the meaning and significance of ethnicity, with emphasis on the political role of ethnicity in groups. Information is presented from a review of literature regarding groups from four viewpoints--subjective/behavioral strategies, social science research, ethnographic interpretations, and the culture-population-group frame of…

This booklet, designed for both students and community members, provides a history and current description of The Hill, an Italian American community in St. Louis, Missouri. The history of Italian immigration is reviewed, with a focus on agricultural and economic conditions in Italy from 1850-1900. The social life, housing, and occupational…

Anthropologists have indicated that the need to act politically and to avoid the appearance of such action is marked in egalitarian societies. The perils of confrontation in such societies often foster indirect and highly allusive speech. This paper invesitgates the relationship between direct and indirect speech in an Indo-Fijian community which…

As federal legislation increasingly reflects a view that education is a vehicle for implementing social policy, mandated program evaluation studies often focus on political questions in contrast to educational questions. This study is based on participant-observation data gathered during a two-year evaluation study of Virginia teacher education…

The bulk of this conference report is made up of three papers. In the first, J. A. Riffel argues that there are two polar orientations to the problem of evaluation in education--the independent empirical and the participatory problem-solving. To date, education has been dominated by the former approach. Only the latter allows for a variety of…

The impact of federal legislation upon educational research and evaluation is explored in detail within a political systems framework. Specific laws have affected the financial support, organization, and function of research and development services. These laws include: the Cooperative Research Act (1954); the Elementary and Secondary Education…