WORK OF VOCATIONAL GUIDANCE OFFICER

Southland Times, Issue 23827, 26 May 1939, Page 8

WORK OF VOCATIONAL GUIDANCE OFFICER

MENTAL TEST OF TECHNICAL COLLEGE STUDENTS

“As vocational guidance officer for the Southland Technical College, Mr G. Hill has already done a considerable amount of preliminary work” stated the report of the principal (Mr C. A. Stewart) presented to a meeting of the Southland Technical College Board of Managers last night. “His first major job was to conduct a group mental test of all the pupils, using the otis standardized test recommended by the New Zealand Council for Educational Research. The results have already proved interesting and should be distinctly useful to teachers in checking their judgment of pupils. We find that the average standard of intelligence in the school, as judged by the test, is slightly above that for the Dominion. A useful line of inquiry still to be followed up is the degree of correlation between the test results and the class results gained in various subjects and groups of subjects. In other words we should have a more or less exact statement of the extent to which success in individual subjects depends on or is proportional to natural intelligence.” Mr Hill had also sent out a questionnaire to pupils who had entered office work in recent years from the commercial course, the purpose being to collect information and suggestions as to the usefulness and direct bearing of the training on the nature of the subsequent work, continued the report. A schedule for group testing for aptitude for commercial work was now under consideration. Aptitude tests for trade and manual work had been worked out and standardized, but so far they had not found such tests suitable for application to big groups: in other words the testing by most schedules had to be done individually and was therefore a very slow process. They were meantime collecting a library of books on vocational guidance, testing and so on. These should become very useful as the information was made available to staff and students by the vocational guidance officer.