The Dimensionality of Educational Beliefs

175 p.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1982.From numerous polls, surveys, and personal experience of school administrators, it is clear that lay citizens hold a variety of beliefs about education. It is not clear, however, to what extent these beliefs are organized along the lines of several more embracing ideologies or movements in education. This research explores three major questions. First, are the educational beliefs held by citizens structured in some systematic way and, if so, are these beliefs ordered along one or more dimensions? Second, are certain social status characteristics related to certain educational beliefs? Third, is residential location (urban, rural, suburban) of the respondent related to specific educational beliefs?The data show citizens tend to structure their beliefs about the functions of education into four dimensions. The dimensions are identified as socialization of youngsters, fulfilling individual needs, providing utilitarian education skills, and producing academic achievement. Socialization of youngsters and academic achievement are found among the better educated as well as the less well educated, in every type of community--rural, urban or suburban--and whether citizens are satisfied or less than satisfied with the public schools. Citizens' belief patterns regarding utilitarian educational skills (curriculum issues) and individual needs of youngsters vary by educational attainment level, degree of satisfaction with the schools and type of community.U of I OnlyRestricted to the U of I community idenfinitely during batch ingest of legacy ETD