set 1983: no . 2

Teachers coordinate and supervise the work of a team of people. In this respect they are like managers in business and
industry and must have similar skills. In school, as in industry, work has to be done, tasks are described and assigned, teams of people are organised and supervised, time is allocated and monitored, and an output is generated and controlled for quality. The output of the school is learning and the teacher has the demanding task of orchestrating everything that happens… Read more

Theories of how we learn to read are important springs for research and as research data piles up their strengths and weaknesses are being revealed. Meanwhile, back in the classroom, trial and error is as important as theory and data. In this item we have the experiences and methods of one successful reading teacher. She does not claim for her methods that they will work in every case, and she can not mention all of them in this short article. But the researchers will note how many of their… Read more

If we distinguish what it is that good readers learn to do that poor readers do not learn we are half way to knowing what to
do to cure a lot of problems, for 'Failure in reading, virtually means failure in most learning tasks'. At primary school, a lot of time is given to teaching reading. Some children learn faster than others and this is taken care of with such techniques as reading groups and graded reading books. But at secondary school pupils are taught subjects; although they… Read more

What is work experience for? The main goal may be to make students more employable, or it may be to teach students about the community in which they live. It may be to help students to become more responsible and socially mature, or, to establish links between school and community. Does the type of work experience fit that educational purpose? A student is not likely to develop responsibility in a job consisting of closely supervised routine tasks. Or, observing and assisting a highly… Read more

Most claims of bias in a test concern its content. Each of the three illustrations contains elements of content bias, which is the type of test bias that comes readily to mind for most people. A test with biased content contains questions that in one sense or another are 'unfair' to an identifiable sub-group of those being tested. Examples of typical bias cited include: words that are unknown or unfamiliar; topics that have not been covered adequately or at all, questions drawing on… Read more