Over the past decade, vocational and technical education teachers were encouraged to use commercially produced task lists to develop their curriculum materials. Unfortunately, however, many commercially developed task lists distributed by private companies, state departments of education, universities, and many other agencies may, to some extent,…

The process of conducting a task analysis is one of determining exactly and in greatest detail what people do when they perform a certain job, or what they need to know when they enter a certain course of study. A task analysis is sometimes, but not always, preceded by a needs assessment to identify discrepancies between training or educational…

This study is the fourth in a series of reports from the Reading-to-Write Project, a collaborative study of students' cognitive processes at one critical point of entry into academic performance. The study of task representation reported here explores how students and teachers perceive the same writing assignment by comparing the reported…

Community-referenced activities, which involve combinations of skills used in routine tasks of daily living, are critical for the independent functioning of moderately and severely handicapped persons. The paper examines the characteristics of these activities in order to extract implications for enhancing instruction. The tasks involved in such…

Using the DACUM (Developing a Curriculum) process, the British Columbia Ministry of Education performed a task analysis of the work of recreation workers. A survey questionnaire was developed and mailed to 600 practitioners in the field; 262 were returned, with 232 of these usable. The majority of the respondents were from the Vancouver area, were…

The nature of education as a social process in workplace settings outside of schools was explored over 3 years at 35 intern settings for an alternative high school program in a large city. The experiences of students at the 35 sites were compared to identify essential features of work tasks and the social means to accomplish these tasks. Two…

This module is one of a series of 127 performance-based teacher education (PBTE) learning packages focusing upon specific professional competencies of vocational teachers. The competencies upon which these modules are based were identified and verified through research as being important to successful vocational teaching at both the secondary and…

This paper explains recommended procedures for establishing a computer based, multimedia, computer managed system emphasizing self-paced, individualized instruction as an approach to learner controlled education. The basic components or modules of such a system are briefly described, including student information, instructional analysis, learning…

The purpose of this literature review was to determine what evidence there is that instructional designers apply ID Models, as well as to establish what other activities and processes they might use in their professional activities. Only ten articles were located that directly pertained to this topic: seven reporting on empirical research and…

Seeking to determine the training methods that can most effectively develop highly proficient performance, this report describes the molecular analytic techniques currently used in the Air Force (the instructional systems (ISD) approach based on breaking a complex task into discrete steps) and presents the limitations of these techniques for…

The text is designed for a course in the application of behavior modification techniques with handicapped children. The first part considers eight elements of the behavioral approach, including describing behavior precisely, recording behavior, arranging consequences, and teaching new behaviors. The second section, a practicum outline, provides…

A set of procedures for validating the Army's Skill Qualification Tests (SQT) are described. Three phases are discussed: (1) the selection of tasks, (2) the selection of specific content for hands-on performance test items, and of written self-evaluation components, and (3) the establishment of content validity of the hands-on component. The task…

An instructional system that is both efficient and effective should present information so that it is easily processed by learners and so that the cognitive structures resulting from instruction correspond to the structure of the content to be learned. This paper presents a discussion of methods for describing content structure and cognitive…

Answers are provided to some of the most frequently asked questions about teaching and education in Canada, and a guide to other publications and institutions that can provide more detailed information is presented. It is especially noted that each province and territory in Canada has its own autonomous educational system and may make its own…

The personal problem-solving process can be functionally analyzed from a cognitive-behavioral perspective into at least four major performance classes: (1) decision making; (2) problem exploration, differentiation, and definition; (3) identification of response alternatives; and (4) performance of an intended solution response. The personal…