Guidance in the Schools: A new device for teachers and psychologists.

The paper gives a preliminary account about a set of tools meant for guidance interventions in the schools (level: 14 years old). The main features are a questionnaire to be used individually or collectively; a software which converts into an alpha-numeric text file the answers that a scanner captures as images; and a software which imports the questionnaire answers, does all the routine scoring and psychometric work required and produces a report for each child and a report for the teacher or the psychologist in charge of a group of children giving a sketch of what is more urgent to be done with differente subgroups of children; a workbook to be used individually or for group training practice. Separate reports for the children and the operators help to give separate and non-competitive roles to psychologists and teachers. The paper is mainly concerned with the “diagnostic” components of the interventions, giving details about the questionnaire (“Focus 11+”) and the companion software. Results obtained in two schools encourage to make a larger use of the instruments, which already seem to have reasonable reliability standards.