Television news in the classroom: What are adolescents learning?

Having adolescents study current events in school is valued highly by teachers. However schools often do not stress the instruction of current events. In this study, students were compared across high schools that were designated as exemplary schools in the use of the Channel One television news program and three comparison schools. The results indicated that students who had greater prior knowledge of current events were more likely to report being mastery oriented toward the news; consequently, those students reported engaging in more outside of school news-seeking behaviors and therefore knew more about current events than did other students. In addition, watching television news in supportive environments, grade point average, gender and socioeconomic status were related to current events knowledge. Implications for the instruction of current events in schools are discussed.