Modeling student performance in diagnostic tasks: A decade of evolution

Since 1976 the authors have been involved in an evolving research and development program focusing on the application of computer-based simulation to diagnostic training in technical environments. Eight simulation-oriented training systems are used to describe the authors' understanding of and approach to student diagnosis. Each of the systems described capitalized on experimental and/or empirical findings from previous experiences. The article describes how design decisions were driven first by research findings and then by the reality of building effective computer-based training systems within the constraints of operational environments. The paper on which this article is based was presented at the Cognitive Skill Acquisition Workshop, Air Force Armstrong Laboratory Human Resources Directorate, Brooks Air Force Base, Texas, in July 1990. It is also published in Regian, W. J., & Shute, V. J. (Eds). (1992).Cognitive approaches to automated instruction. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.     

Research and the Improvement of Teaching

A currently fashionable phenomenon in the United Kingdom (and, I understand, elsewhere in the world) is the Personal Organiser. For those in this audience lately returned from several years back-packing in the Himalayas, and therefore without knowledge of what I am talking about, the Organiser is a loose-leaf notebook of a particular format. The inserts — diary pages, memo sheets, cash rulings, street maps — are selected according to the owner's needs from among several hundred different printed leaves. The format has been around for decades. It has only been copied and sold in quantity by large numbers of manufacturers in the past year or two. And it has now achieved symbolic significance.     

Versions of Vocationalism: an analysis of some social and political influences on curriculum policy and practice

This paper reports a case study which tests and develops further theories which seek to explain the social and political processes which shape curricular definitions. It is grounded in research into a critical phase in the history of careers education. In contrast with other studies of the process of defining curricula, the factors involved are explored both over time and at a number of levels of operationalisation. At these various levels careers education was, for example, successively devocationalised, radicalised, devocationalised and revocationalised. Through comparative analysis of the material, a model is developed which helps to explain the development of these distinctly different versions of vocationalism, drawing on both interactionist and neo‐Marxist perspectives.