Young Adult Literature and Censorship: A Content Analysis of Seventy-Eight Young Adult Books (open access)

Young Adult Literature and Censorship: A Content Analysis of Seventy-Eight Young Adult Books

The purpose of this study was to analyze a representative seventy-eight current young adult books to determine the extent to which they contain items which are objectionable to would-be censors. Seventy-eight books were identified which fit the criteria of popularity and literary quality. Content analysis was selected as the quantitative method of research. Each of the seventy-eight young adult books was analyzed for the six categories which were established through prior research. The six categories include profanity, sex, violence, parent conflict, drugs, and condoned bad behavior. These categories were tallied each time they occurred in the books. Reliability was assured with a rating of .98 by a committee of six professionals. The data reveal that profanity occurred more times in the seventy-eight books than the other five categories with a total of 5,616. The category of drugs was noted 4,171 times. References to sex followed in number with 3,174. The categories which occurred the least were violence with 1,849 occurrences and condoned bad behavior with only 489 occurrences. By applying a frequency index formula to determine the number of objections in each book in relation to the number of pages, a comparison among the books could be made. The analysis, …
Date: December 1986
Creator: Horton, Nancy Spence
System: The UNT Digital Library
Education Through Alienation: Elements of Gestaltist Learning Theory in Selected Plays of Bertolt Brecht (open access)

Education Through Alienation: Elements of Gestaltist Learning Theory in Selected Plays of Bertolt Brecht

This study explored the relationship between the dramatic and the educational theories developed by Bertolt Brecht and selected twentieth-century theories of pedagogy. A survey of Brecht's life and works revealed that although the stimulus-response theories of the associationist psychologists were inappropriate to Brecht's concepts, the three principal aspects of Gestaltism—perception, insight, and life space, as formulated by Max Wertheimer, Kurt Koffka, Wolfgang Kohler, and Kurt Lewin—seemed profoundly related to Brecht's concern with man's ability to perceive and to learn about his environment. Brecht strove to create perceptual images of historical environments. The characters, who represented various ideologies and philosophies in situations which stimulated insightful learning, struggled with life spaces that accurately resembled life outside the theatre. Thus, Brecht utilized elements of the theories of perception, insight, and life space in his dramas as he strove to force his audiences to perceive the characters' environments, to grasp the significance and relationships between the characters' environments and their own social milieu, and to recognize those influences in one's life space which attract or repel the individual. The study also suggested that Brecht's works might be amenable to empirical study.
Date: December 1982
Creator: Starnes, Ted Duncan
System: The UNT Digital Library
Ideas About Adult Learning in Fifth and Fourth Century B.C. Athens (open access)

Ideas About Adult Learning in Fifth and Fourth Century B.C. Athens

The problem of this study was to determine to what extent contemporary adult education theory has similarities to and origins in ancient Athenian ideas about education. The methodology used in the study combined hermeneutics and the critical theory of Jurgen Habermas. Primary sources incuded Aristotle, Plato, Aristophanes, and Diogenes Laertius; secondary sources included Jaeger, Marrou, Dover, and Kennedy. In the analysis of Athenian adult education, three groups of adult educators were identified—the poets the sophists, and the philosophers. The poets were the traditional educators of the Greek people; their shared interest or way of perceiving the world emphasized the importance of community cohesion and health. In Athens in the mid-fifth century B.C., a new group of educators, the sophists, arose to fill a demand of adults for higher and adult education in the skills necessary to participate in the assembly and courts. The sophists emphasized a pragmatic human interest and taught the skill of rhetoric. Socrates and Plato created a new school of educators, the philosophers, who became vigorous ideological opponents of both the poets and the sophists. The philosophers exhibited a transcendental interest or approach to knowledge; the purpose of life was to improve the soul, and the preferred …
Date: December 1986
Creator: Hancock, Donald H. (Donald Hugh)
System: The UNT Digital Library
Child Rearing Attitudes, Perceived Parental Behavior Patterns, and Learning Disabilities in Adoptive and Natural Families (open access)

Child Rearing Attitudes, Perceived Parental Behavior Patterns, and Learning Disabilities in Adoptive and Natural Families

The problem of this study is to investigate the differences in perceived parental behavior patterns, child rearing attitudes, and learning disabilities in natural and adoptive families. The purposes of this study are to compare the child rearing attitudes of adoptive and natural parents, to compare the child's perception of parental behavior in adoptive and natural families, to discover if the two groups differ in their ability to predict their children's perceptions of parental behavior, and to investigate the incidence of learning disabilities among adoptive children. Findings indicate that significant differences exist between natural and adoptive parents as measured by the PAS and the CRPBI-R. Adoptive fathers are not as likely as natural fathers to feel it is impossible to change a child from his already determined way of behaving and believe parental or environmental influences to be more important than natural or inherent causations. The younger the child was at the time of adoption, the better the adoptive parents were able to predict what the child would report about parental discipline. Adoptive parents are also found to be more accepting of childhood behaviors and feelings and have more mutual trust and understanding of their children than are natural parents. There …
Date: December 1978
Creator: Anderson, Judith Ann Barham
System: The UNT Digital Library
An Analysis of Self-actualizing Dimensions of Top and Middle Management Personnel (open access)

An Analysis of Self-actualizing Dimensions of Top and Middle Management Personnel

The purpose of the study was to examine categories of self-actualization and specific biographical and developmental factors from the data on 225 individuals selected from top and middle management by psychologists with Rohrer, Hibler and Replogle, international firm of management consultants. The investigation was designed to determine if differences existed for the two groups.
Date: December 1970
Creator: Ladenberger, Margaret Echols
System: The UNT Digital Library
A Study of the Cultural Interaction Between Thai Students and North Texas State University (open access)

A Study of the Cultural Interaction Between Thai Students and North Texas State University

Because international students are an increasingly significant aspect in American colleges and universities and on the North Texas State University campus in particular, this study was undertaken to explore the intercultural clash which Thai students at North Texas State University experience. Twenty-two Thai students were interviewed in depth using the oral history method. Ten faculty and administrators who work with international students were interviewed concerning their observations of Thai students. The information gleaned from these thirty-two interviews and from an examination of the basic socio-cultural differences between Thailand and the United States resulted in the isolation of the following basic difficulties. 1. Thais do not have command of written and oral English. 2. Americans do not have an appreciation of foreigners and lack tolerance in everyday exchanges with them. 3. Thais avoid becoming involved in American society. 4. Thais are not efficiently prepared for the American classroom. 5. American instructors do not appear prepared to handle the problems of Thai students. The study also developed a number of suggested solutions: 1. Raise the consciousness of Americans concerning Thai students; 2. Provide more effective ways of improving oral and listening skills in the English proficiency of Thai students beginning with American-directed …
Date: December 1986
Creator: Bohlcke, Diane
System: The UNT Digital Library
A Theoretical Framework for a Program of Graduate Education for Teachers and Administrators in Nursing Education (open access)

A Theoretical Framework for a Program of Graduate Education for Teachers and Administrators in Nursing Education

The problem with which this investigation is concerned is the development of a theoretical framework for a program of graduate education for the preparation of teachers and administrators in nursing education. The theoretical framework for the program was developed after extensive research of the literature concerning graduate education generally and nursing specifically. Additional data were obtained from four different questionnaires sent to the presidents, chairmen, and faculty of all Texas colleges with programs for an Associate Degree in Nursing as well as to 100 students and 100 graduates representing all Texas programs for the Associate Degree in Nursing. The purpose of the study was to review the history of nursing, its development as a profession, and its system of education, including past, present, and future trends in each category of education. This survey gave a perspective to the graduate program proposed in this study. hen all fifty-seven accredited graduate nursing programs in the United States were analyzed to determine the current nature of graduate education in nursing and innovations initiated by specific graduate programs, as substantiated by the literature. The data from the questionnaires sent to all the Texas programs for the Associate Degree in Nursing paralleled the developments and …
Date: December 1973
Creator: Bulbrook, Mary Jo Trapp
System: The UNT Digital Library
George I. Sanchez: Don Quixote of the Southwest (open access)

George I. Sanchez: Don Quixote of the Southwest

This historical study examines the career of George I. Sanchez, New Mexican educator, who led many political and educational battles in New Mexico and Texas to improve educational opportunities for Spanish-speaking children. Archival materials from the State Records' Center of New Mexico, the papers of Senator Bronson M. Cutting, the Rockefeller Foundation Archives, the papers of President Lyndon Baines Johnson, Sanchez's private papers, unpublished materials at the University of Texas in Austin, oral history, and published materials were used in this study. The author used oral history and archival materials to gather much of the information for this work. The author extends special thanks and appreciation to Mrs. George I. Sanchez for making Sanchez's private papers available for study. The author also wishes to thank Dr. Hector Garcia, Senator Ralph Yarborough, Judge Carlos Cadena, Tom Sutherland, Arthur Campa, J. W. Edgar, Ed Idar, Jr., John Silber, and Connie Sprague, Sanchez's daughter, for their help.
Date: December 1976
Creator: Leff, Gladys R.
System: The UNT Digital Library