Education Commons^™

Understanding Pisa And Its Impact On Policy Initiative: A Review Of The Evidence, Petra Lietz, Mollie Tobin, Dita Nugroho

Dr Petra Lietz

Technologies, Democracy And Digital Citizenship: Examining Australian Policy Intersections And The Implications For School Leadership, Kathryn Moyle

Professor Kathryn Moyle

There are intersections that can occur between the respective peak Australian school education policy agendas. These policies include the use of technologies in classrooms to improve teaching and learning as promoted through the Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians and the Australian Curriculum; and the implementation of professional standards as outlined in the Australian Professional Standard for Principals and the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers. These policies create expectations of school leaders to bring about change in classrooms and across their schools, often described as bringing about ‘quality teaching’ and ‘school improvement’. These policies indicate that Australian children …

Informing Policy And Practice, John Ainley

Dr John Ainley

Comparing results from large-scale assessments can usefully inform education policy and planning, and educational practice in schools and classrooms, as John Ainley explains.

Informing Policy In Developing Countries, Petra Lietz, Mollie Tobin

Dr Petra Lietz

Petra Lietz and Mollie Tobin discuss the impact of large-scale assessment programs on education policy in developing countries.

Filtering Children’S Access To The Internet At School, Kathryn Moyle

Professor Kathryn Moyle

Countries differ in their policy responses to the question: “Should children’s access to the Internet be filtered?” Countries such as the UK, U.S. and Australia do filter online content with software on servers, and countries such as Denmark, Sweden and The Netherlands, do not. The differences between these respective countries’ school policies are philosophical and political. This paper discusses intersections between the aims and purposes of schools, the political economy and the use of electronic filters on the Internet, for educational purposes. The paper concludes with a reflection of the implications of these issues for school leaders.

Can Health Insurance Reduce School Absenteeism?, Ryan Yeung

Ryan Yeung

Enacted in 1997, the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) represented the largest expansion of U.S. public health care coverage since the passage of Medicare and Medicaid 32 years earlier. Although the program has recently been reauthorized, there remains a considerable lack of thorough and well-designed evaluations of the program. In this study, we use school attendance as a measure of the program’s impact. Utilizing state-level data and the use of fixed-effects regression techniques, we conclude that SCHIP has had a positive and significant effect on state average daily attendance rates, as measured by both SCHIP participation and eligibility rates. …

Queensland Teachers’ Conceptions Of Assessment: The Impact Of Policy Priorities On Teacher Attitudes, Gavin Brown, Robert Lake, Gabrielle Matters

Dr Gabrielle Matters

The conceptions Queensland teachers have about assessment purposes were surveyed in 2003 with an abridged version of the Teacher Conceptions of Assessment Inventory. Multi-group analysis found that a model with four factors, somewhat different in structure to previous studies, was statistically different between Queensland primary and (lower) secondary teachers. Primary teachers agreed more than secondary teachers that ‘assessment improves teaching and learning’, while the latter agreed more that it ‘makes students accountable’. The inter-correlation of ‘assessment is irrelevant’ to ‘makes students accountable’ was statistically stronger for primary teachers. Teacher beliefs reflected the differing practices of assessment by level of schooling.

Total Cost Of Ownership & Total Value Of Ownership, Kathryn Moyle

Professor Kathryn Moyle

School leaders are regularly required to make decisions concerning the effective integration of ICT into their schools’ teaching and learning programs. School leaders however, face challenges about the processes to use to inform their decision-making. These challenges include knowing which data to draw upon; how to collect the data and how to analyze it so that meaningful decisions can emerge. As such, this chapter examines some recent activities aimed at using data to inform leadership and management strategies in schools as they pertain to teaching and learning with educational technologies, and focuses in particular on total cost of ownership and …

What Does 'Public School Education' In Australia Mean In The 21st Century, Kathryn Moyle

Professor Kathryn Moyle

What does 'public school education' mean in Australia in the 21st century, with its past tradition of free, compulsory and secular schooling, and the present school sector policies urging the widespread use of digital technologies? This paper starts from the premise that histories and traditions underpin the provision of public school education in Australia. The author argues that the recognition of the nature of these histories and traditions is important to acknowledge for their sustainability: so they are not taken for granted; are subjected to investigation and are debated; and where appropriate can be maintained. In addition, acknowledging the role …