Social studies-related dissertations dealing with elementary and secondary education which are listed in Volume 41 of "Dissertation Abstracts International" are reviewed and critiqued. Excluded were dissertations on moral development and those dealing with social studies education in foreign countries. (RM)

A content analysis of elementary reading books examined the amount of encyclopedic knowledge and attempted to reconstruct the features of social reality depicted by the books. The readings are vague, underestimate children's learning abilities, and present conservative views of social reality. (AM)

Summarizes basic principles for analyzing discourse. Focuses on discourse in the press, analyzing various levels, units, dimensions, modes, and social contexts. Discusses the relevance of discourse analysis to mass communication research. (PD)

Discusses and compares two poetry anthologies, "The Poet's Tongue," compiled by W. H. Auden and John Garrett, first published in 1935, and "The Rattle Bag: An Anthology of Poetry," compiled by Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes, recently published. (FL)

Reports that the subject of leadership ranked high, but party policy was not ignored in editorials in four major British newspapers during the 1979 British general election. (FL)

Reports that foreign affairs topics made up 15 percent of the stories covered by 49 United States daily newspapers in the 1980 Presidential campaign. (FL)

Refutes some of the arguments often given by students majoring in technical fields to explain why they supposedly do not need to write. Identifies the kinds of documents writers in several fields actually write and offers instructional implications for what should be stressed in technical writing courses. (HTH)

Reviews ERIC documents that provide information about the use of illustrations in reading materials. (FL)

Content analyses of 14 hours of children's television programing were conducted to determine messages concerning cross-racial relationships. Onscreen cross-racial interactions comprised just one percent of the children's programing sampled. Black/White relationships were neither more nor less likely than White/White relationships to involve…

Surveys "The New York Times" coverage of the persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany and concludes that the newspaper gave considerable coverage to the situation. (FL)

Examines the extent to which violence contributes to the size of the audience for a television program. (FL)

Demonstrates that, because of certain elements of the rhetorical situation in which "Kent State" was presented and because of the nature of its composition, the docudrama functioned to purify the image of Bill Schroeder, one of the four students killed on the Kent State University campus on May 4, 1970. (PD)

Determines from empirical information on the application of four readability formulas to a group of widely used college economics textbooks that there is no consistency in the absolute reading levels or the rank orderings of these books. (AEA)

Compares passages from two weekly newsmagazines and finds differences in readability according to type of content, but not along lines of the delayed reward/immediate reward typology. (FL)

Reports that only 8.6 percent of news stories in eight newspapers had women as main characters. (FL)