For more than twenty years controversy has existed in the Armed Forces over the kind of knowledge and training electronic maintenance technicians should have. The Navy and Air Force have conducted research projects in this area, and for the Army the Human Resources Research Organization (HumRRO) has developed several methods to improve the training of Signal Corps electronic maintenance personnel. Emphasizing a functional context approach rather than the theory and design of systems, HumRRO considered two elements to be essential to equip the student with capabilities general enough to enable him to cope with the numerous different problems he would encounter; first, the learning context must have meaning for the student based on his previous learning, and second, it must have relevance to the instructional goals. Throughout the 1950's and 1960's, HumRRO conducted numerous field studies of which the most important task projects were FORECAST, JOBTRAIN, MAINTRAIN, REPAIR, LIMIT, and a summation-type project called HAWKEYE. The results from this research into the training of electronics maintenance technicians can be generalized to the problems faced by all trainers, and HumRRO has developed a systematic and general procedure for curricular control that can be used in all job training courses. (ELG)