Designing hypermedia documentation for safety critical training applications

This paper discusses the requirements for authoring methodologies for large multimedia systems to be used for technical education documentation in the domain of 'safety critical' industries and presents work which contributes to the development of a methodology for their design. Such documentation is typically required to serve both for training purposes and for direct support of engineers in the field. This dual-purpose nature means that documents are typically complex with multiple navigation paths. The documentation used to train for and support maintenance and repair may itself be safety critical, in that incorrect documentation can lead to incorrect maintenance procedures. Research into 'industrial strength' hypermedia has tended to concentrate on the issues of robustness and data integrity, while the issues of design methodologies for such systems have not received as much attention. These issues include those of the verifiable correctness of such systems, both in terms of their content and other issues such as sequence of presentation. It is argued that the addressing of these issues is essential to the development of technical documentation systems that are of sufficient quality to be used for safety critical applications such as within the transport industry. The requirements that viable design methodologies for these applications must address are discussed, and a methodology is proposed, based on traditional authoring methods and process algebra-based formal specification and verification.     

An Examination of a Small‐Group Decoding Intervention for Struggling Readers: Comparing Accuracy and Automaticity Criteria

In this study, we compared methods to improve the decoding and reading fluency of struggling readers. Second‐grade poor readers were randomly assigned to one of the two practice conditions within a repeated reading intervention. Both interventions were in small groups, were 20–28 min long, took place 2–4 days per week, and consisted of phonemic awareness training, letter sound practice, and practice in word families. Students in the accuracy condition (n= 27) practiced each page until they reached 98 percent accuracy while students in the accuracy + automaticity condition (n= 29) practiced until they reached rate (30–90 cwpm) and accuracy criteria. Hierarchical linear modeling revealed no differences between practice conditions in decoding accuracy, reading comprehension, and grade‐level text reading fluency. Significant differences favoring the accuracy + automaticity group were found in measures of decoding automaticity.     

LATENCY‐AGED CHILDREN'S VIEWS OF AGING

This study investigated the contents of children's attitudes toward the elderly and compared these attitudes with the children's attitudes toward young people.

The Children's Views on Aging (CVOA) questionnaire was administered to 256 latency‐aged (8‐10 year‐old) children. The children were white and black, male and female, and came from both rural and urban backgrounds.

The children's responses to the CVOA were analyzed quantitatively using chi‐square and t‐tests. The results showed that children had some negative perceptions of the aging process, but positive views of the older person. Comparison of the children's attitudes toward older people and young people showed that the children's attitudes were more negative toward older people in the potency dimension of attitude but more positive toward older people in the evaluative dimension. The findings suggest that children's attitudes toward aging are complex and diverse. Important implications for educational practice are discussed.

This study formed part of Ronald Marks’ doctoral dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the School of Social Work, University of Pittsburgh, 1980.     

Classroom materials

Five children and five families

Scholastic Book Series, 904 Sylvan Avenue Englewood Cliffs, N.J. 07632

The Bowmar nature series: The ways off plants

Bowmar Publishing Corporation 4563 Colorado Los Angeles, CA 90039

Science experiences for young children

Rosemary Althouse and Cecil Main, Jr. Teachers College Press Teachers College, Columbia University New York and London, 1975 1234 Amsterdam, N. Y. 10029

Walker Plays: Mythology Curriculum Associates 6 Henshaw Street Woburn. Mass. 01801     

The socially skilled teacher and the development of tacit knowledge

Skilled interpersonal relations are crucial for effective teaching and learning but much professional knowledge here is tacit and thus not easily communicated. This article presents the results of a study that examined the tacit knowledge of trainee and experienced teachers in relation to various problematic interpersonal aspects of school life. Trainee (n = 501) and experienced (n = 163) teachers in secondary schools were presented with a series of hypothetical vignettes and asked to rate each of 128 potential response options. Trainees completed the survey at the beginning and end of their professional training year. It was found that experience appeared to be related to the capacity to identify ‘bad’ responses, but there was little difference in relation to the identification of ‘good’ responses. Further differences between novice and experienced teachers in relation to preferred strategies are reported. Implications for teacher education and for future research are identified and discussed.