The Effects of a Five-Day Institute on the Attitudes of Black and White Public School Participants: An Occasional Paper--1971.

One hundred and seventy-six public school administrators, teachers, and students from the State of Tennessee attended a five-day institute designed to improve intergroup relations within their schools. As one method of indicating the effects of the institute on their attitudes, a pretest and posttest attitudinal survey was administered. This paper presents a statistical analysis of the results of that survey, and reports the attitudinal changes of the black and white school participants; the latter were found to have changed their attitudes about concepts relating to the resolution of racial and student unrest in the schools--for example, desegregation, Martin Luther King, Jr., and segregation. They also changed attitudes about concepts related to turmoil on the high school campus; such concepts as student unrest, militancy, rioting, and the SDS changed in a positive way. In another aspect of the study, it was found that black and white participant attitudes were different relative to a large number of concepts. In general, black participants were more positive than whites toward concepts dealing with unrest and race, and white participants were more positive regarding concepts that are usually considered to be more conservative. (Author/RJ)