The purpose of this research was to identify and nationally verify the competencies considered important to local administrators of vocational education. A comprehensive literature search was conducted to identify all relevant administrator competency studies and available competency-based instructional materials. Fifteen studies were located. A…

The paper describes a vocational program in which task analysis was used in teaching vocational skills to 64 severely and profoundly developmentally disabled clients. Tasks required for successful completion of work situation and program conditions are outlined. An evaluation system is utilized in which behavior is rated according to nine levels…

Describes a specific technique that involves initiative games to assess the level of group cooperation among children ages 11 to 13 in a school setting. Describes the development of initiative tasks used in the evaluation and the observation procedure used. (SB)

This paper describes task based language instruction (TBLI) in Japanese secondary education, focusing on: (1) "English Education in Japanese Senior High Schools: The Status Quo and the Future" (e.g., teacher centered instruction, teaching four communication skills separately without a real communicative purpose, and the approach of…

Describes the Minimal Acceptable Performance Standards (MAPS), which measures worker performance at Consolidated Edison Company. Steps in establishing standards are: to identify tasks to be performed, to establish behavior-oriented objectives, and to write items for lesson-plan content. Sample MAPS forms for a "job performance walkdown"…

Reviews the syntactic priming task, a paradigm involving the presentation of a phrasal or clausal context, followed by the presentation of a target item for lexical decision or naming. Notes that response times are faster for targets syntactically congruent with the preceding context than for incongruent targets. Outlines how to administer this…

Reviews a study that was designed to find evidence of factors influencing the kind of interaction found in small-group work in language learning among young adult English teacher trainees in a developing country. (22 references) (GLR)

Discusses two strategies that provide concrete-thinking students with opportunities to develop and use formal or critical-thinking skills. Describes using task analysis and long-term investigations in the classroom. (YP)

Describes Spartanburg Technical College's six-step process for developing curricula that integrates job-specific content with work-related skills. Identifies skills employers want, ways of incorporating those skills, the curriculum design model, considerations for implementation, and benefits. (DMM)

Learning to write is a complex process that depends on mastering a variety of processes and skills, including how to plan compositions and regulate writing behavior. One approach that has been used successfully to teach both good and poor writers such processes is Self-Regulated Strategy Development (SRSD). With SRSD, students are taught…

In this paper, difficulties of students in the case of computer-mediated teaching of geometry in a traditional classroom are considered within the framework of "transactional distance", a concept well known in distance education. The main interest of this paper is to record and describe in detail the different forms of…

Words and pictures with earlier learned labels are processed faster than words and pictures with later learned labels. This age-of-acquisition (AoA) effect has been extensively investigated in many different types of tasks. This article provides a review of these studies including picture naming, word naming, speeded word naming, word…

This paper reports on a study that was carried out to determine learners' attitudes to learning grammar through the use of two types of consciousness-raising tasks. A deductive task provided explicit explanations of a grammar structure, while an inductive task required learners to discover the grammar rules for themselves. The study investigated…

This paper describes an action research project undertaken to look into the effectiveness of tasks designed to raise learner awareness of conversational strategies. The goal was to test whether tasks and direct instruction aimed at promoting learner awareness of conversational language at the discourse-level had any impact on the students'…

School administrators are often involved in change processes that include gathering input from various stakeholders in their organizations to help in decision making. They usually include other administrators, teachers, board members, and sometimes individuals from the business sector. One group that is often excluded, and is perhaps one of their…