Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Education Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Articles 1 - 7 of 7

Full-Text Articles in Education

Using Measures Of Quality To Improve The Learning Outcomes Of All Children, Dan Cloney Aug 2018

Using Measures Of Quality To Improve The Learning Outcomes Of All Children, Dan Cloney

2009 - 2019 ACER Research Conferences

There is compelling evidence that high-quality early childhood education and care (ECEC) programs can act to narrow achievement gaps attributed to social inequality. This evidence is typically observed in model programs, designed by experts and offered to vulnerable families outside the market. In everyday settings, where market forces may price families out of certain programs or poor local availability may preclude attendance, ECEC programs do not appear to deliver these significant gains or close these gaps. There is a need to continually improve quality in all ECEC settings to deliver on the potential of early education. It is unclear, however, …


Enhancing Teaching And Learning Through Design Practice, Lori Lockyer Aug 2018

Enhancing Teaching And Learning Through Design Practice, Lori Lockyer

2009 - 2019 ACER Research Conferences

Design is part of a teacher’s practice on a daily basis. Teachers are constantly designing and redesigning learning experiences for their students. However, the notions of the teacher as designer or ‘teacher design practice’ are rarely used as frameworks within teacher education or continuing professional learning. In fact, ‘teacher design thinking’, that is, how school teachers think about and engage in design practice has been an under-researched area. Design thinking has the potential to provide teachers with a scaffold to reflect upon contextual and evidence-based factors when designing learning experiences for their students. However, we need to know how teachers …


Equipping Teachers With Tools To Assess And Teach General Capabilities, Claire Scoular Aug 2018

Equipping Teachers With Tools To Assess And Teach General Capabilities, Claire Scoular

2009 - 2019 ACER Research Conferences

There is wide recognition that students need to be equipped with appropriate social and cognitive skills demanded by society and the workforce. The unresolved question is how to do this. Many education systems globally are addressing this demand by including skills such as critical thinking, problem-solving, collaboration, and creativity into curriculum documents or supplementary materials. However, there is little research to guide educators in teaching such skills at school level. The need to develop practical solutions for assessing and teaching social and cognitive skills, broadly classified under the umbrella ‘21st-century skills’ or ‘general capabilities’, is ever increasing. An integrated approach …


Assessing Accomplished Teaching With Reliability And Validity: The Acer Portfolio Project, Lawrence Ingvarson Aug 2018

Assessing Accomplished Teaching With Reliability And Validity: The Acer Portfolio Project, Lawrence Ingvarson

2009 - 2019 ACER Research Conferences

We know that good teachers are worth their weight in gold. But if good teaching is to be truly valued, the teaching profession must be able to demonstrate that it can evaluate itself in ways that are reliable, valid and fair. This capacity is central to any profession. It is also central to lifting the status of teaching, rewarding accomplished teaching and enabling teaching to complete with other professions for our ablest graduates. Recent OECD reports emphasise the necessity of strengthening the teaching profession, which depends upon widespread use of evidence-based teaching practices. Building the capacity for evaluation is the …


Communicating Student Learning Progress: What Does That Mean And Can It Make A Difference?, Hilary Hollingsworth, Jonathan Heard Aug 2018

Communicating Student Learning Progress: What Does That Mean And Can It Make A Difference?, Hilary Hollingsworth, Jonathan Heard

2009 - 2019 ACER Research Conferences

Traditionally in schools, the main method of communicating students’ academic performance has been the summative end-of-semester report, and the focus of much of this communication has centred on reporting achievement against year-level standards. While semester reporting largely remains established practice, the advent of new school management systems has seen schools embrace a practice known as ‘continuous reporting’. Though well-intended, early analysis would suggest that the potential benefits of this relatively new process are inconsistently understood, and reveal a confusion between progressive instalments of feedback versus feedback on student progress. Such confusion may be indicative of other gaps in the organisational …


The Role Of Evidence In Teaching And Learning, Geoff N. Masters Ao Aug 2018

The Role Of Evidence In Teaching And Learning, Geoff N. Masters Ao

2009 - 2019 ACER Research Conferences

Highly-effective teaching requires evidence-informed decision making at crucial points in the teaching process. First, effective teachers use quality evidence to establish the points individual learners have reached in their learning. This enables teachers to identify starting points for further teaching and learning and to ensure that each student is given learning opportunities at an appropriate level of challenge. In contrast, much teaching instead assumes all students will be appropriately challenged by common year-level curricula. The process of establishing and understanding where students are in their learning often requires detailed diagnostic evidence of individual misunderstandings and obstacles to learning progress. Second, …


Acer Research Conference Proceedings (2018), Australian Council For Educational Research (Acer) Aug 2018

Acer Research Conference Proceedings (2018), Australian Council For Educational Research (Acer)

2009 - 2019 ACER Research Conferences

There is no shortage of opinion about more and less effective ways of teaching. Schools are continually presented with strategies, programs and approaches that claim to be ‘research-based’, ‘evidence-based’ or even ‘brainbased’. Vocal advocates of particular teaching methods promote their proposed solutions in the media. But how many of these programs and methods have solid foundations in research? And how can teachers and school leaders distinguish exaggerated marketing claims from teaching strategies shown through research to be effective in improving student outcomes? Research Conference 2018 examines research evidence around teaching practices that make a difference. It brings together leading international …