Intended to provide information on applied research and development (R&D) priorities in vocational education and on the type of R&D required for each need, this report is divided into (1) an introduction to the problem and procedures, (2) a content analysis of selected documents, and (3) background papers for selected need areas. Chapter 1…

A case study of curricular change compares two leading models of organizational change. One model stresses the uncertainty and disorder of major changes and views them as dramatic events. The other model sees major organizational shifts as the result of ordinary day-to-day processes and emphasizes their routine nature. For this study, the…

A taxonomy of revision changes was developed and applied to 18 case studies of writers' revisions. Subjects were six inexperienced student-writers, six advanced student-writers, and six expert adult-writers. The primary distinction of the taxonomy was between surface (formal and meaning-preserving) revisions and text-base (microstructure and…

Based on the belief that the study of children's literature has not sufficiently considered the socioeconomic and historical forces that shape literature, a study was conducted to examine the evolution of the content and narrative structure of 32 children's novels written about the American Revolution and published between 1899 and 1976. The…

Describing cognitive science as a new discipline based upon the integration of elements of psychology, computer science, linguistics, philosophy, and education, this paper argues that such a discipline has important implications for the field of communication. Following an overview of the literature of cognitive science, the paper offers an…

This chapter is a review of literary works that can enrich and expand the curriculum; pedagogical methods and techniques for the teaching of literature are not dealt with here. This review covers Portuguese, English, Spanish, and French literary works that span the mid-portion of the century, up to 1972. Background information and some explication…

Content analysis of job descriptions written for principals in 68 of New Mexico's 88 school districts led to identification of 1,650 specific duties. Of these, 1,416 dealt with administrative or managerial functions while only 234 defined educational leadership responsibilities. Such an analysis is limited in that it identifies formally stated…

A study was conducted to validate the Instructional Support System-Occupational Education (ISSOE) automotive mechanics curriculum. The following four steps were undertaken: (1) review of the ISSOE materials in terms of their "validity" as task statements; (2) a comparison of the ISSOE tasks to the tasks included in the V-TECS Automotive…

Noting that Lawrence Kohlberg has written extensively in the fields of education and psychology regarding moral development in adolescents and adults, this paper argues that Kohlberg's approach offers a viable addition to levels of understanding of rhetorical discourse. The paper first offers a discussion of the Kohlbergian theory of moral…

Two representative samples of expository prose from sixth grade textbooks (one in science and one in social studies) were analyzed for clarity of explanation. Four text criteria were applied to the analyses: structure, unity, coherence, and audience appropriateness. The results of the analysis suggested that many children's textbooks are not…

A model for assessing student writing achievement uses sets of criteria to chart students' writing progress that are based on a study of exemplary samples of student writing produced at various stages of development. The model provides a viable alternative to assessment methods that call for students to produce lengthy essays on preselected topics…

A content analysis of a 1976 series of primary reading textbooks was conducted to analyze salient factors affecting female role socialization. Examined in its entirety, the series was designed for grades one through six and contained 573 entries and 4,831 illustrations. In each of the textbooks, regardless of grade level, twice as many males as…

A content analysis conducted in two successive years of family role structures and family role interaction patterns of U.S. television families constituted a role-by-role behavior description of family verbal interaction, classified within directional categories of going toward, going against, or going away. All family-role interactions, whether…

The research reported in this paper identifies the "core curriculum" and "optional curriculum" suggested by widely used textbooks of elementary school mathematics and describes the influence of each on teacher autonomy in selecting the content of instruction. Preliminary analyses suggest that the "core curriculum" is generally consistent with…

The objectives of this research were to investigage (1) the feasibility of an index simulator, and (2) the use of a sequential analysis model for the automatic classification of documents. Index simulation was studied in general for various types of indexes, and in depth for the simulation of an inverted coordinate index to a document collection…