This is What Came Out

With acknowledgements to colleagues in The Writing Research Team, English Department, University of London Institute of Education—Miss Nancy Martin, Messrs. James Britton, Dennis Griffiths, Bernard Newsome, and Dr. Harold Rosen.     

Teachers' Questions in the Infant,Junior and Secondary School

Ten teachers in infant schools, 10 in junior schools and 10 in secondary schools had their teaching recorded. Subsequent analysis was made of the teachers' use of questions categorised as of fact, closed solution, open solution, task supervision and routine. When the first two categories were combined, the results for the junior schools were very similar to those reported by Galton and his colleagues in 1980 and 1999. Moreover, the results for both the infant and secondary schools differed very little from those of the junior schools. Some implications of these results are discussed.     

Training Counselors to Interpret Psychoeducational Evaluations: A Course Model

Evidence from the literature and from reported practice indicates that school counselors are increasingly expected to be competent in the interpretation of individually administered psychoeducational tests and reports. Systematic training in these competencies, however, is often not included as an integral part of counselor education programs. This article describes one counselor education program's response to the need for training in these interdisciplinary skills. The course model presented has been positively received by students and counseling internship supervisors.     

Personal Computers in Laboratory Teaching of Control

This paper reports on the incorporation of personal computers in the laboratory program at UMIST's Control Systems Centre. Laboratory practice is an integral component of all our control course. The laboratory facilities provide a mechanism for testing and verifying theoretical and design approaches. Incorporating computers in all phases of the laboratory program makes possible the use of current techniques in the analysis and design of realistic control systems. The control systems laboratory at UMIST has been developed with the goal of providing real world analysis and design experience in a laboratory setting. A collection of scale model experiments representing the major categories of industrial control problems has been constructed. These working models are coupled with a standard instrumentation interface and analogue and digital computers to implement control strategies. In all cases, great care has been taken to retain realism and allow the student to concentrate on control issues rather than configuration or programming problems. The primary objective of using personal computers in the control laboratory is to provide an on-line link between the student and the laboratory model. This provides direct ‘hands on’ experience of digital control ideas, interactive digital control experimentation and use of the computer as a multi-function virtual instrument. In addition, the computer is used off-line to simulate model performance as various control strategies are tried. At this point in time, each laboratory model station has been equipped with a personal computer containing A/D and D/A converters, hard and floppy disk, and a real-time clock. The computers are networked to provide access to printing and file storage facilities. Originally the software packages were written primarily in BASIC, and ran on BBC computers. These versions are however in the process of being replaced by PC-based packages written in C. Both the original BASIC and the C-successors have been developed to provide interactive, real-time control of the model using a choice of digital control algorithms. Using the keyboard as a control panel, the student can observe model performance, vary controller parameters, choose display characteristics and record parametric and graphical data. Future developments will expand the choice of available control algorithms and enhance the off-line analysis and design tools.