Instructional Television circa 1976

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the National Center for Educational Statistics conducted a survey of instructional television use in elementary and secondary schools during the 1976-77 school year.

Methodology

For purposes of the survey, the following definitions were used:
ITV is defined as “any in-school use of television (either broadcast or recorded) for instructional purposes.”
Regular use of an ITV series is "use of at least 75% of the lessons in a series."

Surveys were sent to a random sampling of school superintendents, principals, and teachers across the country in school districts with enrollments of 300 or more.  Responses were received from 96.4% of superintendents, 89.1% of principals, and 85.2% of teachers.

Access

Availability
72% of all teachers had access to ITV for use in their classes.
Access was greater at elementary schools (75%) than at middle/junior high schools (64%) or high schools (72%).

42% of all teachers (59% of teachers with access) used ITV in the 1976-77 school year.
33% of all teachers (46% of teachers with access) used one or more ITV series regularly.

90% of teachers who had access to ITV said that television sets were usually both available when needed and in good repair; the majority of available sets were black-and-white. Only 34% of teachers had regular access to color television sets.

On average, only 55% of teachers with access to ITV also had access to videotape recording equipment, with access much greater at the high school level (91%) than at middle schools (76%) or elementary schools (33%).

Delivery Methods
The following table presents percentages of districts, schools, and teachers reporting access to ITV by various methods.  Access generally decreases from district level on down.
 

delivery method	district	school	teacher
off-air from public television station	74%	75%	58%
off-air from commercial station	46%	38%	26%
videotape or film	48%	28%	37%
closed-circuit	18%	11%	n/a
cable	32%	22%	15%
ITFS	3%	4%	3%

Obstacles
Teachers reported the main obstacles to classroom ITV use, in descending order, as
-Inconvenient broadcast schedules
-Lack of programming on a particular topic
-Equipment unavailable or broken
-Poor communication by broadcasters
-Failure to obtain schedule guides in time to plan classes.

Teacher Preparation, Media Usage, and Attitudes

17% of all teachers had been trained in the use of instructional television.
Trained teachers were more likely than untrained teachers to use ITV; they were also likely to use more of it and to spend more time integrating it with other classroom instruction.

95% of the teachers who used ITV devoted some class time to related preparation and follow-up activities.

On average, teachers who used any ITV used it at the rate of about 60 minutes per week.

Reasons for Use
Teachers cited reasons for ITV use, in order of descending importance, as
-Providing different approaches
-Bringing new resources to the classroom
-Reinforcing material taught in regular lessons
-Motivating students
-Broadening students’ range of experiences
-Presenting new material

Reported Attitudes
Most teachers and principals responded positively (50%) or neutrally (40%) to a series of statements about the role of television in instruction. However, responses from any given person varied from statement to statement, with a mixture of positive and neutral responses most common for respondents.

Popular Programs

Of the top 25 most popular ITV series (as ranked by teacher usage), most were for designed for intermediate (primary/junior high school) audiences.
In descending order, the most popular shows and their intended target audience were as follows:

Most-Used ITV Programs 1976-77

Program	Intended audience
Electric Company	Primary / Intermediate
Cover to Cover I	Intermediate
All About You	Primary
Inside Out	Intermediate
Sesame Street	Pre-School / Primary
Ripples	Primary
Bread & Butterflies	Intermediate
Villa Allegre	Pre-School / Primary
Matter of Fiction	Intermediate
Mulligan Stew	Intermediate
Measuremetrics	Intermediate
Word Shop	Primary / Intermediate
Cover to Cover II	Intermediate
NOVA	High School
(General art programs)	indeterminate

Student Survey

A separate survey of students indicated that about 35% of elementary and secondary students watched at least one ITV lesson during a given week.
14% of the students who received ITV lessons also reported having seen the same ITV lesson with more than one teacher during the school year.
 

Return to timeline.
 

See the results of other ITV usage surveys:

1963-64

1982-83

1990-91

 

Last update: August 26, 2005 Comments to: Mary Miller mlmiller@uga.edu Created by Mary Miller and Teresa Cruce for Dr. Thomas Reeves' UGA class EDIT 6100, spring 2002 URL=//http://www.arches.uga.edu/~mlmiller/timeline/7677survey.html