The report investigates current practices and attitudes toward social education in twenty schools in Australia. Three different aspects of the curriculum--the ideal, the planned, and the operative--are reflected from viewpoints of the teacher, the student, and the outside observer. Particular attention is paid to the implications of the curriculum for the students' ability to function effectively in today's society. A secondary objective was to develop, test, and refine a typology based on curriculum style. Using both qualitative and quantitative methods, a variety of data gathering techniques were used, including questionnaires, Q-sort, interviews, attitude measures, and content analysis. The report is presented in four sections. Section I outlines the background and provides an overview of curriculum study and the basic typology developed from it. Section II examines the relationship between curriculum style and the kind of social education that students receive. Section III extends and refines the typology on the basis of evidence collected during the study. Section IV summarizes findings including a high level of agreement between teachers and students, style types, and schools on the ideal curriculum in social learning, less marked agreement on the planned curriculum; and differences in perceptions of the operative curriculum. The typology of curriculum style was extended from three to nine style types. Three working hypotheses were found: that these curriculum style types will be found in other social education programs, that their characteristics will be similar, and that they will have similar implications to those evident in the case study schools. Recommendations include a further testing of the hypotheses in a wider variety of school and curriculum situations and a further exploration of the characteristics and determinants of curriculum style. (Author/CK)