The project described consisted of a field experiment in the delivery of a social service by means of a commercially-operated cable television system. A five-program series was developed and produced which provided foster-parent training leading to the licensing of prospective foster parents. Some 64 volunteers began the training program. Half the…

The goal of Vegetable Soup, a television series for children, is to help counter the negative, destructive effects of racial prejudice and racial isolation and to reinforce and dramatize the positive, life enhancing value of human diversity in entertaining and affective presentations that children can understand and relate to. This teaching guide…

The second-year evaluation of the Electric Company children's television series used reading tests to assess the skills and concepts addressed on the show. Tests were given in October and May, and teacher questionnaires were administered three times during the second year. Classroom atmosphere during the viewing time was observed as well. The…

Nutrition-related messages inundate mass media advertisements in the United States but it is unclear as to how those messages affect a person's food selection behavior and awareness of nutrient and non-nutrient message content. This dissertation is a culmination of research examining the use of mass media (television and print) as a pedagogical…

Television violence and the impact it has on children is a growing concern in the world today. Although research indicates that violence on television triggers aggressive behavior in children, the characteristics of those children also need to be examined. Factors such as age, intellectual level, identification with television personalities, the…

These classroom guides, designed to accompany the daily CNN (Cable News Network) Newsroom broadcasts for the month of June, provide program rundowns, suggestions for class activities and discussion, student handouts, and a list of related news terms. Topics include: France gets a new government and Prime Minister as the Socialist Party defeats the…

These classroom guides, designed to accompany the daily CNN (Cable News Network) Newsroom broadcasts for the month of September, provide program rundowns, suggestions for class activities and discussion, student handouts, and a list of related news terms. Topics covered by the guides include: the women's conference in China, "No Man Is an…

A study investigated whether excessive television viewing coupled with communication suppression by parents in the preschool years had a distinct impact on the development of communication apprehension (CA) in children and on college-age young people. Subjects (average age 21.8 years and 99% Caucasian) were selected from speech classes at a…

This handbook is designed for use by teachers engaged in interactive televised instruction in any of the following ways: via communications satellite reception, with student communication over telephone lines; via microwave systems, which allow two-way video and audio between sites; or via Instructional Television Fixed Service (ITFS), which is a…

These guides, designed to accompany the daily Cable News Network (CNN) Newsroom broadcasts for December 1-18, 1998, provide program rundowns, suggestions for class activities and discussion, links to relevant World Wide Web sites, and a list of related news terms. Top stories include: World AIDS Day/AIDS history, Exxon and Mobile announce a…

Several current television series for preschool children convey stories, not through meaningful dialogue, but through visual information and intonational cues embedded within nonsensical dialogue. This study examined young children's ability to construct meaning from such materials. Participating were 135 preschoolers, 3 to 5 years old. Subjects…

Findings from analysis of television coverage of women in sport during the 1970's and early 1980's suggested that coverage was considerably less than for men's televised sport, and that coverage of women athletes was characterized by stereotypical images and limited information. Trends reported by researchers who examined the status of women…

During the 1979-80 school year, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) surveyed approximately 29,000 nine-year-old students regarding attitudes and achievement in reading and literature. Findings from this study were used for an analysis of the relationship between reading achievement and television viewing. The following…

A tool was devised to measure the perceived reality of television, an important variable in understanding how television influences an individual's perception of social reality. This was accomplished by using a research plan that allowed university subjects to generate the measures used for tapping the "reality" of television content.…

This paper questions both what was being tested in prior instructional media research on the educational value of film and television and the value of some of those findings. An alternative way of conceptualizing the communication process that occurs when students view an instructional film or television program is proposed, which places viewers…