Vocational education and race in the Chicago public schools: Three historical case studies and implications for current reform

Three vocational high schools provide illustrative and contrasting histories in terms of African-American education and economic opportunity. Washburne Trade School reinforced trade union exclusion of African-Americans, and since integration in the 1960s has been abandoned by most of the powerful unions. Dunbar Vocational High School directed African-Americans into the lower-paying trades, but has lost the economic base that the ghetto once provided. Chicago Vocational School prepared the white working class for industrial jobs, but integration and re-segregation has coincidentally seen the erosion of Chicago's manufacturing base. These schools are compared in the economic, political, and cultural contexts of past and present. It is proposed that an integrated strategy for the reform of vocational education is necessary for these schools to adapt to economic change in the present and future.     

Comparability of Scores From Performance Assessments

Why is comparability of forms important for performance assessments? Can traditional methods of form equating be used? What problems are likely to arise in equating? Can standards generalize across forms?     

Root causes of errant ordered radiology exams: Results of a needs assessment

A comprehensive needs assessment was conducted at ATA hospital to determine the root causes of a high number of errant radiology orders from requesting physicians. The Human Performance Technology Model, Gilbert's Behavior Engineering Model, and Rummler and Brache's Nine Performance Variables Model guided the needs assessment process. Three solutions were proposed. The development of the long‐term solution, a software utility, has been initiated. The Behavior Engineering Model was used to identify possible solutions to post‐training performance gaps identified during the evaluation.     

Automatic detection of collisions in elite level rugby union using a wearable sensing device

Elite rugby union teams currently employ the latest technology to monitor and evaluate the physical demands of training and games on their players. Tackling has been shown to be the most common cause of injury in rugby union, yet current player monitoring technology does not effectively evaluate player tackling measurements. Currently, to evaluate measurements specific to player tackles, a time-consuming manual analysis of player sensor data and video footage is required. The purpose of this work is to investigate tackle modeling techniques which can be utilised to automatically detect player tackles and collisions using sensing technology already being used by elite international and club level rugby union teams. This paper discusses issues relevant to automatic tackle analysis, describes a technique to detect tackles using sensing data and validates the technique by comparing automatically detected collisions to manually labeled collisions using data from elite club and international level players. The results of the validation show that the system is able to consistently identify collisions with very few false positives and false negatives, achieving a recall and precision rating of 0.933 and 0.958, respectively. The aim is that the automatically detected tackles can provide coaching, medical and strength and conditioning staff with objective tackle-specific measurements, in real time, which can be used in injury prevention and rehabilitation strategies.     

When labels hurt but novelty helps: children's perseveration and flexibility in a card-sorting task

Children often perseverate, repeating prior behaviors when inappropriate. This work tested the roles of verbal labels and stimulus novelty in such perseveration. Three-year-old children sorted cards by one rule and were then instructed to switch to a second rule. In a basic condition, cards had familiar shapes and colors and both rules were stated explicitly. In an uninformative-label condition, cards had familiar shapes and colors, but the first rule was not stated explicitly. In a novel-stimuli condition, both rules were stated explicitly but stimuli were novel on the first sorting dimension. More children switched to the second rule in the uninformative-label and novel-stimuli conditions than in the basic condition. Implications for theories of cognitive flexibility are discussed.