Fire play: ICCARUS—Intelligent command and control,acquisition and review using simulation*

Is it possible to educate a fire officer to deal intelligently with the command and control of a major fire event he will never have experienced? The authors of this paper believe there is, and present here just one solution to this training challenge. It involves the development of an intelligent simulation based upon computer managed interactive media. The expertise and content underpinning this educational development was provided by the West Midlands Fire Service. Their brief for this training programme was unambiguous and to the point:

• 1 Do not present the trainee with a model answer, because there are no generic fires. Each incident is novel, complex, and often ‘wicked’ in that it changes obstructively as it progresses. Thus firefighting demands that Commanders impose their individual intelligence on each problem to solve it.
• 2 A suitable Educational Simulator should stand alone; operate in real time; emulate as nearly as possible the ‘feel’ of the fireground; present realistic fire progress; incorporate the vast majority of those resources normally present at a real incident; bombard the trainee with information from those sources; provide as few system‐prompts as possible.
• 3 There should also be an interrogable visual debrief which can be used after the exercise to give the trainees a firm understanding of the effects of their actions. This allows them to draw their own conclusions of their command effectiveness. Additionally, such a record of command and control will be an ideal initiator of tutorial discussion.
• 4 The simulation should be realisable on a hardware/software platform of £10 000.
• 5 The overriding importance is that the simulation should ‘emulate as nearly as possible the feelings and stresses of the command role’.

     

Thinking with certainty or with doubt: a Lacanian theorisation of discursive knowledge in teacher education

ABSTRACT

The paper presents a theorisation of pedagogic knowledge formation, as a continuous attempt to understand the positions in discourse we occupy. The paper documents some participatory practitioner research by teacher educators centred on a course development initiative for student teachers of English, at an English university. Students researched their experiences of becoming a teacher within a course that was largely school-based, whilst their tutors researched their own involvement in the process (the main focus of this paper). Drawing on Lacanian theory, tutors are depicted as learning subjects having more or less certainty or doubt about the knowledge they possess. In attempting to understand this interplay of certainty and doubt, tutors arrive at stronger conceptualisations of learning. Through this approach, the paper provides a theoretically informed conception of professional knowledge, as involving a process of renewing ideas about learning, in meeting or resisting external demands.     

Assuring Quality in Collaborative Distance Education Programmes: The Experience of the University of Texas System TeleCampus

In 1997, the University of Texas (UT) System initiated the development of the UT TeleCampus, a centralized facilitation point for distance learning. The TeleCampus opened its virtual doors in May 1998. At the start, its focus was entirely on support services for students. By late 1998, however, the TeleCampus had begun developing what would become collaborative benchmark on-line programmes for the UT System. Since then, in developing more than twelve complete on-line degree programmes, the administrators of the TeleCampus have learned lessons about creating and maintaining quality in collaborative, Web-based, distance, for-credit, education courses and degree programmes. Some of the key issues arising from the collaborative nature of these programmes and methods that are used to ensure that each course meets a high-quality standard are discussed.     

Implementing the Contract: the technical and vocational education initiative

Participating schools have a contractual responsibility to recruit a ‘balanced intake’ of students to TVEI courses. However, in many schools it is form teachers who have the eventual job of promoting TVEI to both sexes ‘across the ability range’.

What this recruitment structure does not allow for is that form teachers may be affected by a number of ‘sources of influence’, the effects of which do not coincide with this objective.

The aim of this paper is to build up a picture of the school as an ‘open ended’ interrelating totality, within which form teachers confront the demand for a ‘balanced intake’ alongside a number of other, potentially conflicting factors.     

Prevalence of child sexual abuse reported by a cross-sectional sample of New Zealand women

OBJECTIVE: The objective is to describe the prevalence of child sexual abuse (CSA) among women in New Zealand, document ethnic specific rates, and outline the frequency of abuse experienced and the most commonly identified perpetrators. Associations between CSA and later adverse consequences were also explored. METHODS: Retrospective report from a random sample of 2,855 women aged 18-64 years old in two regions in New Zealand. Face-to-face interviews with one randomly selected woman from each household were conducted. RESULTS: The overall prevalence rates for CSA were 23.5% for women from the urban region and 28.2% from the rural region. In both urban and rural regions, Māori women more frequently reported experiences of CSA than women from European and other ethnic groups (urban: 30.5% vs. 17.0% and rural: 35.1% vs. 20.7%). The median age of onset of the abuse was 9 years, and the median estimated age of the abuser was 30 years. Half of those who experienced CSA reported that it occurred once or twice, 27% "a few times," and 23% "multiple times." Sole perpetrators were involved in 83% of cases. The majority of cases were perpetrated by a family member, most frequently male. Compared with non-victims, victims of CSA were twice as likely to experience later intimate partner violence and violence by others. CONCLUSIONS: This study reports on a large, population-based sample in an ethnically diverse population in New Zealand, providing the first ethnic-specific rates of CSA available. Findings suggest important priorities for prevention and intervention activities.     

Old Enemies？

本专栏由英国大使馆文化处供稿,旨在让读者从中学习地道英文,体悟英文百味。本期介绍了英国的四个组成部分——英格兰、苏格兰、威尔士和北爱尔兰之间的“恩怨”与“宿仇”。由于英格兰地域广,政治、经济实力强,不了解英国的人通常误把英格兰当英国。但是,在体育上,其他几个“兄弟”可是要扳回一城的……     

Literacy,languages and development in Africa: a policy perspective

International Review of Education - In the multilingual environments of Africa, national literacy policies vary in terms of the attention they give to the roles and purposes of local, national and...