The extensive television coverage of the Opening Ceremonies of the 1984 Summer Olympic Games was a vital lead-in for a television network as it sought to generate audience interest over the course of the games. This coverage models an unfolding international news event in its presentation style and is analyzed from that perspective in a content…

This article reports a study of decision-making processes for selecting instructional materials. The project had two aims: (1) to survey research findings and practices of decision-making processes in instructional material selection in the United States and Australia; and (2) to identify the attributes of decision-making processes used to select…

"Channel One" is a 12-minute daily TV news program designed specifically to be broadcast to high schools. A study examined critically the content of "Channel One" commercials to determine the values, themes, formats, and appeals used to pitch products to students, with special emphasis placed on the values used and promoted in…

A "special themes in literature" course about illness and disability was designed to help future nurses to understand the human, rather than the clinical, dimensions of impairment and its effects on the sufferer as well as the sufferer's family, associates, and community. The objectives of the course were to look at such matters as…

A study analyzed the content of "Pravda," the major newspaper of the Soviet Communist Party and "Vremya," the main evening news program of Soviet television for changes that could be attributed to Soviet General Secretary Gorbachev's policy of "glasnost" (openness). The "Pravda" sample consisted of 18…

A study examined the ways that people talk to policy and decision makers about the future and constructed a model of future talk. Specifically, speeches given to government policy makers about science and technology were analyzed in order to discover how people communicate information about the future. Each incident was reviewed and assigned a…

A study examined the influence of prior knowledge on the quality of responses in three process-approach tasks: writing, conferencing, and revising. Subjects, 20 high-knowledge and 20 low-knowledge fourth grade students, wrote stories about a baseball game. Propositional text bases of first and second drafts were analyzed according to six…

A study was designed to determine if the classifications and definitions of context clues suggested in ten reading methods textbooks were used in three basal reading series. The method textbook analyses provided 27 different context clues. The analysis of the basal reading series--D. C. Heath (1983), Ginn (1984), and Scott, Foresman (1983)--showed…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 15 titles deal with the following topics: (1) the role of public discourse in the soil conservation movement from 1865 to 1935; (2) Dwight D. Eisenhower's public imagery of the Soviet Union and Communist China as presented in…

Noting that technology in the field of graphics and printing has permitted greater use of color, photographs, and graphics by newspapers, a study examined the effects of economic factors such as newspaper competition and ownership on the actual use of new technology for color and graphics. The newspaper sample, stratified on the basis of ownership…

Recognizing that writing suicide stories is hard for reporters, a study examined 1,010 suicide stories from the 1879-1900 era published in 12 newspapers from around the United States to determine how American journalists at other times carried out similar assignments. The newspapers examined were the Atlanta "Constitution," Arkansas…

Recent research on writing that sheds light on writing instruction in English as a second language (ESL) focuses on contrastive rhetoric (the interference of first language rhetoric experienced by the second language learner), patterns of development in English scientific texts that cause problems for second language readers, the contrastive use…

This paper reports on a 1983 national survey that focused on programmatic activity in teacher induction. Responses were obtained from various professionals from the 50 state education agencies. A content analysis of teacher induction programs already in effect was also made. The first set of questions in the survey questionnaire inquired as to…

Periodic summaries of research techniques used in important journals help professors of educational research teach each new generation of researchers. Literature published in "American Educational Research Journal" (AERJ), "Educational Researcher" (ER), and "Review of Educational Research (RER) is reviewed for the 10-year…

Suburban middle class American situation comedies of the 1950s and 1960s idealized the postwar family ensemble with its unproblematic achievement of quality family life. The homemaker as portrayed in these sitcoms was positioned at the center of the postwar consumer economy by the consumer product industry, which built its economy on defining the…