The document contains the texts of nine papers presented at the first conference of the New Zealand Association for Community Education. "Community as a Basis for Education" focuses on ways of utilizing community resources for education and offering learning programs based on the needs of community members. "Community Education and…

In recent years, community colleges have made concerted efforts to reach out and meet the needs of the communities they serve. Relevance in community college education depends upon the successful identification of individual and social needs and the implementation of responsive programs. As a basis for conducting a community needs assessment, the…

Examining the meaning of lifelong learning within the context of "community" (defined in terms of interests and locality), the author explores many learning resources and opportunities and identifies related research questions. The content of this study is presented in three sections. The first section on the community as a setting for…

Considering that the lower ability student in the seventh and eighth grades faces problems of emotion, identity, and self-motivation, there is a need for a more activity-based, exploratory curriculum that gives students responsibility for their learning and living. An interdisciplinary local studies approach was adopted for this six-week unit…

Economic status determined the effects of declining public revenues and a tighter economy on residents of Farmville, Virginia, a small, conservative, rural, Southern community with underdeveloped social services, whose class relations still reflect racial segregation, whose concern for local autonomy is so great that external funding sources are…

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…

A study investigated the introduction of an experimental school-centered and neighborhood-oriented communication system in a small midwestern town. It was anticipated that normal parent-teacher-school communication would be enhanced by the electronic messaging potential of the system. Researchers observed the entire adoption process from the…

Community development depends on capable, visionary local leaders and on informed and active citizens. Thus, in the long run, education for all citizens may be the most critical ingredient to the success of rural community development programs. Schools can further contribute to the development of rural communities by providing an explicit…

Humanistic geography is similar to ethnography in that both are concerned with describing actions and events in terms of their meaning to those experiencing them; humanistic geography is particularly concerned with understanding subjective social space: space as perceived by members of particular human groups. A humanistic geography case study,…

The community-based approach to global education has the greatest potential for involving students in experiential learning that will involve the total nature of the child--cognitive, affective, and psychomotor. This approach also has the greatest potential to help students achieve the educational objectives based on the Tyler-Taba rationale of…

Intended to engage students in a comparative look at local history in two upper Mississippi river towns (Winona, Minnesota and Dubuque, Iowa), this paper describes the computer-assisted component of an upper-level American Studies course. With emphasis on the 19th century, students examine the transition made by the United States from a…

Inquiry techniques are described in which students investigate geographic phenomena in microcosm. The objective of this strategy is to enable students to examine geographic concepts and generalizations on a level which they can easily understand. Specifically, strategies for investigating and analyzing self-contained buildings and planned…

Data on the social effects of boomtown growth and industrialization were collected from residents of three western communities (Craig, Colorado; Price, Utah; and Gunnison, Colorado) via a fairly detailed mail questionnaire sent to a random sample of 900. Completed questionnaires were received from 443 (a return rate of 65%). A number of different…

In order to assess the impact of the growing number of part-time farm families on the nature of social relations in rural communities, part-time and full-time farmers from five counties in South-Central Missouri were compared on three aspects: (1) community integration; (2) perceived benefits from rural living; and (3) goals and priorities they…

Culture is viewed from a sociological perspective through presentation of a case study of social consciousness in San Francisco. Referring to the work of Milton Gordon, the author discusses two theories of social integration. The first theory of assimilation is defined as a process of social and psychological adherence to a core society. The…