Students learned in civics lessons in the German Democratic Republic (GDR, or East Germany) that their socialist society uniquely guaranteed all individuals the right to work, and that, as good socialists, they had the duty to take on socially meaningful work. Using the example of a video recording of an East German civics lesson and its…

Traditionally drama in schools has been seen either as a learning medium with a wide range of curricular uses or as a subject in its own right. This paper argues that the importance of drama in schools is in the processes of social and artistic engagement and experiencing of drama rather than in its outcomes. The paper contrasts the pro-social…

The authors examined the confidence of teachers from Germany, Hong Kong, Italy, and the United States (N = 1,375) to address civic topics with their students. The authors also used differential item functioning models to examine responses to items from the Teacher Confidence Scale of the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational…

This article argues that the field of education and conflict is, in many ways, "stuck in its emergence" because it has yet to develop common theoretical understandings, useful analytical tools, and shared conceptual frameworks to unify and sustain a mutual endeavour by scholars working on a diverse range of topics and cases. In a…

This article attends to comparative education scholars' calls for more dialogue on the contribution of theory to comparative education research. It first presents the results of a review of a small sample of articles from comparative education related journals that elicited the purposes of their comparative research strategies in terms of…

This study, part of a larger research project on political socialization in Europe, examines the role of educational materials in informing individuals in the Netherlands about the political system of the European Community. The report covers five topics: (1) educational materials; (2) educational materials in an ends-means model of formal…

Four books, published 1997-99, draw on diverse disciplines in 18 countries to examine the meaning of civic identity and the contributions of formal and informal institutions to it during late childhood and adolescence. The books move beyond a narrow view of outcomes and inputs of political socialization to encompass activist social movements and…

Toward the end of the nineteenth century, legal and sociopolitical sectors began to view children as a social group of their own, and European countries passed laws for the protection of children and introduced compulsory school attendance. This paper asserts that measures like these led to a far-reaching new definition of childhood on a…

The contradictions of political education in East European socialist countries based on the Hungarian experience are explored in this paper. Divided into three parts, the first part gives a brief sketch of institutionalized political education, while the second concerns the crisis of Hungary's political education emerging in the 1980s. In the…

Forty teachers attending a summer institute in East Germany in August of 1987 were given a questionnaire concerning their attitudes towards the German Democratic Republic and their opinions, perceptions, and misperceptions of Canadian students. The questionnaire was applied in Zwickau, East Germany at a small pedagogical college. Teachers were…

Describes a study of 14 fifth graders concerning their understanding and attitudes toward the Persian Gulf War. Finds that the public school served as a significant socialization agent during the war, although television was even more important. Concludes that patriotic issues and activities overshadowed any attempts to have students think…

To examine the relationship between society and curriculum, three research projects are analyzed. The first project, Beauchamp and Beauchamp (1967), which attempts to answer the question of how a curriculum comes to be what it is, examined the likenesses and differences in curriculum engineering practices among selected European countries. The…

Israeli parents and high school students and teachers attach more importance to instrumental values (idealized modes of conduct such as achievement and decency) than to terminal values (human ideals such as freedom and Jewish/Arab consciousness). They believe that instrumental values are cultivated in schools to a greater extent than terminal…

Traces Soviet educational history during the 1950s and 1960s. Presents chapter four from Ele Monoszon's "The Establishment and Development of Soviet Pedagogy." Reviews theories and research of key Soviet educators during this period. (CH)

Excerpts chapter five from Ele Monoszon's "The Establishment and Development of Soviet Pedagogy." Examines general problems, objectives, principles, and methods of the Soviet pedagogical theory of upbringing. Notes research and theories of key Soviet educators in the 1970s and 1980s. (CH)