Teaching Intensive English students about American culture by having them analyze the advertising content of popular American magazines is suggested. A sample analysis of a typical "People" magazine reveals Americans' interests in nationalism, national pastimes, youth, sex appeal, diet, food, glamour, and cleanliness. Because each magazine…

An analysis and critique of two elementary textbook series: "Discover Art" by Davis Publications and "World of Music" published by Silver Burdett & Ginn are presented. "Whose content, context, and culture?" is an ideological question that assumes that equitable social relations and diverse ways of knowing ought to…

An instrument for to assessing the extent to which postsecondary vocational education programs are competency-based consisted of 159 items grouped into 8 subscales corresponding to 4 standards: (1) identification and validation of competencies; (2) procedures for assessing student competencies; (3) instructional procedures; and (4) administrative…

A study was undertaken to identify the training needs of full-time officers of trade unions in the United Kingdom. Data were collected through the following methods: individual interviews with senior officers of the Transport and General Workers' Union (TGWU) and other trade unions; a questionnaire mailed to every national, regional, and district…

To what extent and in what ways do issues about content and the teaching and learning of content figure in the conversations between novices and their mentors? This paper explores that question by means of four cases drawn from a large data set about two different first-year teacher programs, an induction program sponsored by a university and a…

A study examined the parenting behaviors portrayed on "The Cosby Show" to determine the use of specific parenting skills and family relationship-enhancing communication techniques. Videotapes of nine randomly chosen broadcast episodes were content analyzed according to family communication models of Thomas P. Gordon (1970), Bernard J.…

This paper makes a distinction between the formative evaluation that can be carried out in the early stages of the development of educational television programs, i.e., from the emergence of the idea through the development of a script, and those that have to be executed in the later stages of development, i.e., during the production process. The…

A pilot study explored what children between the ages of 8 and 11 focus on when they write about writing: how children define writing, what features they believe constitute the act and product of writing, and what kinds of writing children consider important and why. During a half-hour period, 36 students in grades 3 through 5 were asked to write…

An examination of the journal writing of 14 second graders during one school year reveals the evolution from egocentricity, with the work of one student serving as a model against which similarities and differences in the growth patterns of the other students are measured. The students' drawings and writings reflect their learning about the world…

Defining agenda-setting as the ability of the mass media to influence the level of the public's awareness and perceptions of political issues, a study was conducted to examine the agenda-setting power of the black periodical press in the United States. Survey responses collected by the University of Michigan Center for Political Studies were…

Noting the many difficulties in conceptualizing and analyzing development communication, this paper enriches the concept by linking it with a particular form of political, economic, and social organization common to many developing nations--the patron-client network. After a brief review of relevant communication and political science literature…

A study was conducted to determine whether the expressed reading interests of third grade students corresponded with the topics in their basal readers. Students indicated on an interest survey the kinds of stories they liked to read. Two fourth grade basal readers were analyzed--"Time to Wonder" by Holt, Rinehart and Winston, and "Clearing Paths"…

A study examined three recent language arts textbook programs for grades one through six to determine the frequency of writing activities, the nature of the writing tasks, and the frequency of process-approach activities such as selecting topics, prewriting, sharing, revising, and publishing. The programs analyzed were Scott, Foresman's "Language:…

A readability formula for elementary Spanish instructional materials was developed by building on previous research, particularly in regard to the application of the Fry readability graph to Spanish language materials. The study began with the selection of average sentence length and number of syllables per 100 words as independent variables.…

One of a series dealing with current issues affecting language arts instruction, this paper focuses on the conceptions and misconceptions of readability. The paper begins by noting that over the years, researchers in readability have had two major goals: to determine what makes written materials easy or difficult to read and comprehend, and to…