Abstract:The present study investigates the extent to which a program guided by the principles of critical pedagogy, which seeks to develop critical consciousness, is associated with the improved academic performance of students attending a low-performance middle-school in Buffalo, New York. The students were enrolled in an in-school academic support program called the Community as Classroom, which used critical project-based learning to show students how to improve neighborhood conditions. The study found that the Community as Classroom program bolstered student engagement as reflected in improved attendance, on-time-arrival at school, and reduced suspensions. Although class grades did not improve, standardized scores, particularly in Math and Science, dramatically improved for these students from the lowest scoring categories. We suspect that given increased student engagement and dramatically improved standardized test scores, teacher bias might be the cause of no improvements in class grades. We conclude that critical pedagogy, which leads to increased critical consciousness, is a tool that can lead to improved academic performance of students. Such a pedagogy, we argue, should be more widely used in public schools, with a particular emphasis on their deployment in Community Schools.

This article examines the use of citizen participation techniques during the planning process for neighborhood revitalization in the Village of Depew which is an industrial suburb of Buffalo, New York. The article focuses on how action research principles can inform and enhance traditional approaches to citizen participation. In particular, we discuss our role as university-based consultants in the local planning process and how drawing from action research principles helped us remain focused on advocating for broad-based citizen participation. Our analysis was based on the application of action research principles and participant observation techniques. During the time that each of us was involved in the planning process for Depew's neighborhood revitalization, reflexive field notes and other data were collected. The article critiques how citizen participation was used to plan for neighborhood revitalization in Depew, and discusses the degree to which action research principles can be applied to future citizen participation efforts.

Television, over the past three decades, has become the primary interpreter of American life and history, and the principal socializing institution in the United States (Cater and Adler, 1974). Because of the great popularity of this medium, the prevalence of violence on television has precipitated an ongoing debate, and a voluminous literature, about the effect that violent TV programs have on the social behavior of children and adults. I One side contends that continuous exposure to TV violence stimulates aggressive anti-social behavior among select members of the mass viewing audience, and that this had led to increases in violent crime and juvenile delinquency. TV, this side argues, not only mirrors the violent content of social reality, but also contributes to violent behavior by creating a vast fantasy world peopled with appealing but violent characters who serve as social role models (Newcombe, 1979; Cater and Strickland, 1975;Seigal, 1957). The other side argues that television merely reflects the ideas that people already have about the world in which they live, and that TV violence has little effect on the social behavior of JOURNAL

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