This document discusses the need to control curriculum quality and describes two methods to assess school districts' efforts at curriculum quality control. Exercising such control means effecting a congruence between what should be taught (the school district's objectives), what is taught, and what students learn. In the first method of assessing…

Results of a case study of collaborative decision-making involving administrators, citizens, and staff show that the process, while not fully collaborative, did increase both citizen participation and community acceptance of subsequent decisions. School board members and administrators in an upper-middle-class Midwest district, faced with…

The 4-H/Community Resource Development workshop was designed to help people conducting Extension 4-H programs on sensitive and complex community issues improve their ability to create a better climate for discussion of alternatives and development of community projects. Topics of the presentations included the role of the 4-H administrator,…

The report presents an overview of cultural policy in Switzerland. It was summarized from a 1976 study of Swiss cultural policy by the Federal Department of the Interior and published by the Council of Europe to provide information to cultural and political circles outside of Switzerland. The document is presented in two major parts. Part I…

To evaluate the current societal role of voluntary and/or obligatory development services and their potential both at home and for global cooperative relationships, data from field surveys, institutional inventories, and individual interviews were analyzed from both developed and developing countries to classify major development service types,…

The Countryside Council is a citizen-based non-partisan public interest research group based in 19 counties of rural southwestern Minnesota. Each year the Council identifies particular problems or needs of the region and sets up task forces to study each problem and make recommendations for resolution. During 1977-79 six task forces were at work.…

FROM AN ANALYSIS OF OVER 2,000 RECONSTRUCTED CONVERSATIONS HELD BY 50 ADULTS IN EACH OF FIVE SCHOOL DISTRICTS, QUESTIONNAIRE RESPONSE DATA WERE OBTAINED TO MEASURE FLOWS OF INFORMATION AND INFLUENCE FROM THE SCHOOL TO THE COMMUNITY FOR OBTAINING PUBLIC SUPPORT. THE STUDY ATTEMPTED TO DESCRIBE (1) PERSONS WHO TALK ABOUT SCHOOLS, (2) THE KINDS OF…

This study investigates how 40 working-class women participate as volunteers in the service, political, and social action arenas of their community--Carondelet, on the South Side of St. Louis. The purpose is to show that working-class women who live in transitional areas are capable of politically addressing the urban problems intruding into their…

Each of these four papers highlights findings of a National Institute of Education-sponsored project entitled "Citizen Organizations: A Study of Citizen Participation in Educational Decisionmaking." The first paper, "Class, Power, and Networking: Implications of Existing Network Patterns Among Groups," discusses the effect of inter-organizational…

This workbook is primarily for use in a workshop to provide information on how land-use decisions are made in Idaho, for what reasons, and with what effect. For students, there are classroom activities that correspond to actual problems of land-use decision making, and suggestions for further study and investigation. For teachers, there are…

This report attempts to determine how successful community groups have been at influencing school decision-making and policy formation. It begins by surveying several research and evaluation studies regarding citizen participation in educational decisions and placing special emphasis on a field study of 16 community organizations. The analysis…

The third part of a three-part assessment of community education research needs, this report attempted to formulate research questions and identify research needs related to community involvement in community education. It begins with a rationale for citizen participation and the function of citizen participation in community education. It…

The Southern Rural Development Center's 1977 plan focuses on ways to move rural development program and research information to the users. One of four regional centers set by the 1972 Rural Development Act, the southern center works with research and extension staffs in 27 land-grant institutions in 13 states and Puerto Rico. Its publication…

In 1977 and 1978, Black Hawk College sponsored two series of community discussion forums paralleling the year's Courses by Newspaper (CbN). With the fall series, based on "Crime and Justice in America," Black Hawk became one of eleven national demonstration models. In the spring, the college sponsored "The Impact of Mass Media on…

This report describes an approach to citizen education being developed by the Mershon Center at Ohio State University. The approach is based on the international experiences citizens have in the course of daily life in their local community. Part one of the report explains three premises upon which the approach rests: (1) the local community…