Concern over students deemed "at-risk" constructs youth as deficient and deviant without considering the experiences of youth themselves. My interest in "at-risk" grows out of my previous work with youth, in various drama education contexts and the fact that youth have told me they found the label offensive. My research…

Teaching a course that is about sexuality but also about larger cultural themes, social processes, and political struggles poses many challenges. These include: 1) choosing readings from a sexuality literature that is ever-expanding; 2) negotiating student expectations that the course will focus on the sexual behavior of individuals when much of…

The document is one of two containing scripts meant to be used with filmstrips as part of in-service teacher training workshops arising from the National Curriculum Development Project for Vocational Educators of Disadvantaged and Handicapped Students. The scripts are for filmstrips entitled "Individualizing Instruction for Disadvantaged or…

A study explored how ethnically diverse students in an urban high school worked collaboratively to conceive and execute original theater pieces that addressed issues of relevance to them. Subjects, 29 of the original 51 seniors in the theater institute program at Hillcrest High School, New York City, completed pre- and posttests, written…

The level of abstraction of the message and the educational effects of five media presentations (Print, verbal sound, print/pictures, print/verbal sound, and pictures/verbal sound) were experimentally investigated. The media components were presented singly or in combination to 6th grade students in a uniformly controlled consistent environment.…

Describes a grant-funded project that used technology to adapt the same instructional materials for 240 fourth-grade students by using captioned video scripts at different reading levels to provide individualization. A multiple-choice quiz of comprehension and vocabulary-related questions was developed as an assessment tool. Student reactions…

This article describes an exploratory study of two Web-based learning environments designed to teach helping skills to human service students. Participants used either an interactive pedagogical agent environment or read a helper-client script. Environments were compared and learning gains were assessed in each of the environments, along with user…

A study was conducted to determine if audience-tailored videotapes and the format of follow-up discussions can change audience attitudes. Sixth-grade students in Taiwan were given a survey on their attitudes toward elderly people. Scripts for videotapes were written based on the data obtained from the survey. Children found to have a negative…

Human service educators constantly struggle with how to best teach students the communication skills required of entry-level human service professionals. While teaching such skills is easier in a traditional face-to-face environment, teaching communication skills via distance learning presents its own challenges. Developing interactive web-based…