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2002

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Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER)

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Articles 1 - 30 of 43

Full-Text Articles in Education

Evaluation Of The University Of Canberra Programme For Advanced Literacy Development Scaffolding Literacy Programme With Indigenous Children In School, John Cresswell, Catherine Underwood, Graeme Withers, Isabelle Adams Dec 2002

Evaluation Of The University Of Canberra Programme For Advanced Literacy Development Scaffolding Literacy Programme With Indigenous Children In School, John Cresswell, Catherine Underwood, Graeme Withers, Isabelle Adams

Indigenous Education Research

This evaluation was created from the records of interviews with the principals and teachers and others involved in the Scaffolding Literacy Programme and is, therefore, a summary document of all the data collected by the three researchers at ACER and the sub-contractor in Western Australia, with an interpretation of the observations in terms of the guidelines set out in the contract.

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The Estimation Of Polytomous Item Response Models With Many Dimensions, Nikolai Volodin, Ray J. Adams Dec 2002

The Estimation Of Polytomous Item Response Models With Many Dimensions, Nikolai Volodin, Ray J. Adams

Assessment and Reporting

Identification conditions and an improved estimation method for a D-dimensional mixed coefficients multinomial logit model are discussed. This model is a generalisation of the Adams and Wilson (1997) random coefficients multinomial logit and it can be used to fit multdimensional forms of a wide range of Rasch measurement models. The computational demands of the numerical integration required in fitting such models have limited previous implementations to three and perhaps four-dimensional problems (Glas, 1992; Adams, Wilson and Wang, 1997). This paper illustrates a Monte Carlo integration method that permits the estimation of models with much higher dimensionality. The example in …

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Lsay Cohort Report The Year 9 Class Of 1998 In 2001: Education, Employment And Interests, Sheldon Rothman Nov 2002

Lsay Cohort Report The Year 9 Class Of 1998 In 2001: Education, Employment And Interests, Sheldon Rothman

LSAY Cohort Reports

This is the third in a series of annual reports on the activities of the Year 9 class of 1998 in the Longitudinal Surveys of Australian Youth (LSAY) project during the previous year. It provides details of the experiences of the cohort in 2001 and, when used with previous Cohort Reports for 1999 and 2000, can be used to monitor annual changes within the cohort.

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Achievement In Literacy And Numeracy By Australian 14 Year-Olds, 1975-1998, Sheldon Rothman Nov 2002

Achievement In Literacy And Numeracy By Australian 14 Year-Olds, 1975-1998, Sheldon Rothman

LSAY Research Reports

This LSAY research report examines student achievement scores on tests of reading comprehension and mathematics from five studies conducted between 1975 and 1998. The data are from five studies involving young people in Australian schools: the Australian Studies in School Performance in 1975, the Australian Studies of Student Performance in 1980, the 1989 Youth in Transition study and the 1995 and 1998 Longitudinal Surveys of Australian Youth studies. The report examines literacy and numeracy trends for all students and for smaller groups of students, with results reported by gender, language background, socioeconomic status and location. Multivariate analyses examine how influences …

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Vocational Education And Training : Participation, Achievement And Pathways., Australian Council For Educational Research (Acer) Sep 2002

Vocational Education And Training : Participation, Achievement And Pathways., Australian Council For Educational Research (Acer)

LSAY Briefing Reports

This paper looks at some of the findings from the Longitudinal Surveys of Australian Youth (LSAY) on participation in vocational education and training (VET) in schools programs, pathways that are associated with these programs, and ways in which students who do not complete Year 12 can be helped by VET courses beyond the school.

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Becoming An Adult : Leaving Home, Relationships And Home Ownership Among Australian Youth, Kylie Hillman, Gary Marks Sep 2002

Becoming An Adult : Leaving Home, Relationships And Home Ownership Among Australian Youth, Kylie Hillman, Gary Marks

LSAY Research Reports

Most studies on the transition from school implicitly assume that adulthood is reached upon gaining full-time work. This report focuses on other aspects of adulthood: moving out of home, establishing a relationship, and buying a house. The report documents the incidence of these events over time and analyses their relationship with social background, demographic and labour market factors. The study uses data from the four Youth in Transition cohorts born in 1961, 1965, 1970 and 1975. [Author abstract]

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Education Helping To Build Social Capital : The British Experience, Estelle Morris Aug 2002

Education Helping To Build Social Capital : The British Experience, Estelle Morris

APC Monographs

The author, a former secondary teacher, now Secretary of State for Education and Skills in the UK government, reflects on the necessity to share ideas about education internationally.

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Student Engagement With School : Individual And School-Level Influences, Sue Fullarton Jul 2002

Student Engagement With School : Individual And School-Level Influences, Sue Fullarton

LSAY Research Reports

In this report, which examines the engagement of young people with school, engagement is defined through Finn's taxonomy of engagement or participatory behaviours, which examines students' level of participation in the extracurricular activities offered to them by their schools. Major findings from the investigation show that between-school differences account for almost 9% of the variation in students engagement levels; the overall level of student engagement in the school was a strong predictor of student-level engagement; gender, parents' educational level, student perceptions of school climate, self-concept of ability and intrinsic motivation were all found to have an effect on individual engagement, …

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Strengthening The Profession? A Comparison Of Recent Reforms In The Uk And The Usa, Lawrence Ingvarson Jul 2002

Strengthening The Profession? A Comparison Of Recent Reforms In The Uk And The Usa, Lawrence Ingvarson

Teaching standards and teacher evaluation

Educational policy makers in many countries recognise the need to focus their policies more directly on factors affecting the quality of teachers. Common to these policies are attempts to reform teachers' pay systems and career paths to place greater value on teachers' work and give stronger incentives for professional development. Investing in effective modes of on going professional learning is regarded increasingly as one of the most effective means of improving student learning outcomes. This article examines two approaches to reforming the teaching profession, one from the UK, the other in the USA. In the case of the UK, the …

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Codebook: The Lsay 1998 Year 9 Sample Wave 4 (2001) Technical Report No. 26, Kylie Hillman Jun 2002

Codebook: The Lsay 1998 Year 9 Sample Wave 4 (2001) Technical Report No. 26, Kylie Hillman

LSAY Technical Reports

The 1998 Year 9 Cohort (Y98) In 1998, a nationally representative sample of approximately 14,000 Year 9 students was selected to form the second cohort of the Longitudinal Surveys of Australian Youth. The sample was constructed by randomly selecting two Year 9 classes from a sample of schools designed to represent state and sector. Reading and numeracy tests were administered to students in their schools to provide information on early school achievement for use in later analyses of educational and labour market participation. Students also completed a background questionnaire about their educational and vocational plans and attitudes to school. Details …

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Education Participation And Outcomes By Geographic Location, Roger Jones Jun 2002

Education Participation And Outcomes By Geographic Location, Roger Jones

LSAY Research Reports

This project has two related aims: to assess the viability of using the Longitudinal Surveys of Australian Youth (LSAY) study data for national reporting of outcomes by geographic location; and to investigate, using LSAY data, the variations in education participation and outcomes by geographic location. While the analyses generally show no statistically significant disadvantage associated with living in a remote area, the small sample size and the small number of schools from which remote area students are selected in the LSAY caution against concluding that there is no disadvantage. [Executive summary, ed]

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Acer Enews 05 May 2002, Acer May 2002

Acer Enews 05 May 2002, Acer

ACER eNews Archive

No abstract provided.

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Development Of A National Standards Framework For The Teaching Profession, Lawrence Ingvarson May 2002

Development Of A National Standards Framework For The Teaching Profession, Lawrence Ingvarson

Teaching standards and teacher evaluation

This paper was prepared for the Ministerial Council on Education, Employment and Training Taskforce on Teacher Quality & Educational Leadership. The brief for the paper was to 'Develop an issues paper to provide a basis for discussion and, where possible, propose options. The paper covers the following broad areas: definitions and purposes for standards (the meaning of standards, rationale for teaching standards, purposes for teaching standards: mapping the territory); defining performance-based teaching standards (professional principles; content standards; evidential standards ; performance standards; how are standards structured?); teaching standards: whose responsibility?; a national standards framework: issues and areas for action (accreditation …

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Changes In Mathematics Achievement Over Time In Australia And Ethiopia, Tilahun Mengesha Afrassa Apr 2002

Changes In Mathematics Achievement Over Time In Australia And Ethiopia, Tilahun Mengesha Afrassa

Shannon Research Press

This study has five major purposes: to develop a general theoretical model which considers the multivariate structure of the available data; to examine the changes of the mathematics achievement level of Australian lower secondary school students over time; to develop a common mathematics scale to enable investigation of mathematics achievement over time and across countries; to develop a theoretical model of student level factors influencing the mathematics achievements of lower secondary students in Australia and Ethiopia and to examine these hypothesised interrelationships between variables; and to investigate the views and attitudes of Australian and Ethiopian students towards mathematics and schooling …

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Constructing And Using Educational Performance Indicators, Ken Rowe, Denise Lievesley Apr 2002

Constructing And Using Educational Performance Indicators, Ken Rowe, Denise Lievesley

Student learning processes

Within the context of a growing international movement toward the adoption of ‘outcomes-based’ modes of educational provision and governance, this paper focuses on the context, nature, purpose and construction of educational performance indicators. Key issues related to types and sources of indicators, essential features of useful indicators, constructing and using performance indicators to advantage, and key elements of Education Management Information Systems (EMIS) are presented and discussed.

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Listening To The Boys: Issues And Problems Influencing School Achievement And Retention, Malcolm Slade Apr 2002

Listening To The Boys: Issues And Problems Influencing School Achievement And Retention, Malcolm Slade

Shannon Research Press

This work summarises the views of 1800 boys, from 60 secondary schools in South Australia, balanced across all sectors. Their views have been clear and largely uniform across the schools, year levels and levels of achievement. Several popularly held views, that the problems start in the primary years, and that the issues are reducible to matters of gender difference, gender equity, peer pressure or literacy and numeracy, are rejected, by the boys and others, as simplistic to the point of being false. Issues about masculinity are conspicuous in their absence. Instead, the boys identify a broad range of interconnected factors, …

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Building A National Vocational Education And Training System, Robin Ryan Apr 2002

Building A National Vocational Education And Training System, Robin Ryan

Shannon Research Press

This study seeks to establish that policy in vocational education has oscillated between two poles. At one, vocational education is seen largely as an adjunct to economic development and the primary concern of the sector is to meet the needs of industry rather than of students. At the other, vocational education is seen as primarily student centred, encompassing goals of individual self-development and the creation of a more equitable society. In practice both these perspectives are present at any time, and both may be almost equally emphasised in VET policy and rhetoric.

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Explaining Differences In Civic Knowledge: Multilevel Regression Analyses Of Student Data From 27 Countries, Wolfram Schulz Apr 2002

Explaining Differences In Civic Knowledge: Multilevel Regression Analyses Of Student Data From 27 Countries, Wolfram Schulz

Civics and Citizenship Assessment

What explains the differences in student knowledge about Democracy, institutions and Citizenship and their skills in interpreting political communication? Does the amount of 'civic knowledge' depend mainly on the home environment, on the students' level of communication and activities in the area of politics, or does school make a difference in acquiring this knowledge? Which student-level and school-level factors do have an effect on cognitive abilities in this domain? The second lEA Civic Education Study provides data on 14-year-old students from 28 countries from Europe, North America, South America, Asia and the Pacific which can be used to study the …

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Fair And Meaningful Measures? A Review Of Examination Procedures In The Nsw Higher School Certificate, Geoff N. Masters Mar 2002

Fair And Meaningful Measures? A Review Of Examination Procedures In The Nsw Higher School Certificate, Geoff N. Masters

Assessment and Reporting

In September 1997 the New South Wales government introduced a number of significant reforms to the Higher School Certificate (HSC). The broad objectives of the 'new' HSC, which was implemented for the first time in 2000-01, are to increase the rigour and quality of the HSC curriculum; ensure HSC marks fairly reflect the standards achieved by students; provide more informative reports of students' HSC achievements; and enhance the chances for more equitable educational outcomes. Although the new HSC incorporates reforms of both HSC curricula and methods of assessing and reporting student achievement, the focus of this review is on new …

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The Designed And Achieved Sample Of The 1998 Lsay Sample Technical Paper No. 16, Michael Long, Nicole Fleming Feb 2002

The Designed And Achieved Sample Of The 1998 Lsay Sample Technical Paper No. 16, Michael Long, Nicole Fleming

LSAY Technical Reports

The design was intended to provide a national stratified sample of Year 9 students which would permit a sample of some 10,000 young people to be interviewed by phone in late 2000. The major stratum considered in the design was State of schooling. Students from smaller states were to be over-sampled and, correspondingly, students from larger states were under-sampled. However, in the 1998 sample, the over-sampling of the smaller states and the territories was undertaken at a lower rate than for the 1995 sample. There were two reasons for this: 1. Continued over-sampling of schools in the smaller states would …

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Rural And Urban Differences In Australian Education., Australian Council For Educational Research (Acer) Jan 2002

Rural And Urban Differences In Australian Education., Australian Council For Educational Research (Acer)

LSAY Briefing Reports

Whether or not students' educational performance is influenced by where they live is an important issue for educators and policy makers. This paper reports findings from the Longitudinal Surveys of Australian Youth (LSAY) into the influence of students' location on several outcomes: achievement in literacy and numeracy; tertiary entrance scores; subject choice in Year 12; participation in Year 12 and higher education; participation in vocational education and training; and transitions from education to work.

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Leading And Managing For High Performance, John West-Burnham Jan 2002

Leading And Managing For High Performance, John West-Burnham

APC Monographs

This paper explores some of the changing perceptions of leadership in education. It focuses in particular on the issue of 'performance', which is at the heart of much educational reform.

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The Apc Summer Institute, 2002 : Reconfiguring Schooling For The 21st Century, Brian Caldwell, Bruce Wilson, Bert Van Halen, Gabrielle Leigh Jan 2002

The Apc Summer Institute, 2002 : Reconfiguring Schooling For The 21st Century, Brian Caldwell, Bruce Wilson, Bert Van Halen, Gabrielle Leigh

APC Monographs

The APC Summer held in January 2001 aimed to provide: a two-day intensive program that linked theory and practice in a chosen area relevant to school leaders in their day to day work; an opportunity for practising school leaders to develop an operational framework to be applied to strategy planning or to the management of key projects in their school; a big picture framework in which school leaders can contextualise their work; and a series of exemplary practices whose underlying principles can be adapted for use in other settings.

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Closing The Gap Between Research And Practice : Foundations For The Acquisition Of Literacy., Molly De Lemos Jan 2002

Closing The Gap Between Research And Practice : Foundations For The Acquisition Of Literacy., Molly De Lemos

Literacy and Numeracy

Over the years two main approaches have emerged in the teaching and learning of reading and writing. One is the 'whole language' approach; the other concentrates more on instruction in phonics. This paper focuses on the theoretical assumptions underlying these two approaches to the teaching of literacy, and the studies which have been undertaken, in the international arena, to find out how children progress, from their earliest educational years, in attaining both initial reading skills and lifelong literacy.

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Learning From International Studies Of Teaching : The Timss-R Video Study., James Hiebert, Hilary Hollingsworth Jan 2002

Learning From International Studies Of Teaching : The Timss-R Video Study., James Hiebert, Hilary Hollingsworth

2002 - Providing World-Class School Education

This paper discusses the Third International Mathematics and Science Study - Repeat (TIMSS-R) Video Study. In addition to the broad goal of describing mathematics teaching in seven countries including a number of countries with records of high achievement, the study had the following research objectives: to develop objective, observational measures of classroom instruction to serve as appropriate quantitative indicators of teaching practice in each country; to compare teaching practice and identify similar or different lessons; and to describe patterns of teaching practice for each country.

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Pisa From Australia's Perspective, Jan Lokan Jan 2002

Pisa From Australia's Perspective, Jan Lokan

2002 - Providing World-Class School Education

This paper discusses the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) survey and the Australian teenagers that took part with students from thirty-one other countries. The paper describes the background to PISA, an initiative of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) keen to have measures of outputs from compulsory level schooling to accompany regularly collected country-level data on educational context and investment in education of human and monetary resources. The author describes the goals and features of PISA, its scope, Australian representatives and, school and background factors.

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Australian 14-Year-Olds’ Civic Knowledge And Attitudes, And How Teachers And Schools Might Improve Them, Suzanne Mellor Jan 2002

Australian 14-Year-Olds’ Civic Knowledge And Attitudes, And How Teachers And Schools Might Improve Them, Suzanne Mellor

2002 - Providing World-Class School Education

This paper describes the Australian content for the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) Civic Education Study and the conduct of the IEA in Australia. The IEA concept of civil knowledge and attitudes towards the civics knowledge of Australian students is discussed. Some general trends and influences identified in the meta data are considered. The author discusses the value of comparing student responses and activities across like countries and considers what the data shows about the total civic knowledge of Australian students and the extent of their civil engagement.

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Information And Communication Technologies In Classrooms : Perspectives From An International Study, John Ainley, Diana Banks, Marianne Fleming Jan 2002

Information And Communication Technologies In Classrooms : Perspectives From An International Study, John Ainley, Diana Banks, Marianne Fleming

2002 - Providing World-Class School Education

Many countries have envisaged a significant role for information and communications technologies (ICT) in their education systems. For example, in Australia one of the goals in the declaration of the Ministerial Council on Education, Training and Youth Affairs on national goals for schooling stated that students should be confident, creative and productive users of new technologies and understand the impact of those technologies on society. A national action plan, Learning in an Online World, has set three priority areas for development making available connections of sufficient bandwidth to allow schools to integrate online services into curriculum practice; providing effective pre-service …

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Retrieving Information, Interpreting, Reflecting, And Then... : Using The Result Of Pisa Reading Literacy., Juliette Mendelovits Jan 2002

Retrieving Information, Interpreting, Reflecting, And Then... : Using The Result Of Pisa Reading Literacy., Juliette Mendelovits

2002 - Providing World-Class School Education

This paper discusses the results achieved by Australia in the initial report on the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). The German reaction to a low score for German students is described. Three responses to PISA reading literacy results in Australia are described. These include: pragmatic use of the PISA reading literacy results at a national level; retrieving information from the international study and using it to create a benchmark for reading literacy for fifteen year-olds in Australia; and, using what has been learnt about reading literacy to question, evaluate and perhaps modify the way that reading literacy is taught …

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Providing World-Class School Education (Conference Proceedings), Australian Council For Educational Research (Acer) Jan 2002

Providing World-Class School Education (Conference Proceedings), Australian Council For Educational Research (Acer)

2002 - Providing World-Class School Education

International achievement studies are capable of identifying international best practice in school education and providing decision makers at all levels—from policy maker to system manager to school leader to classroom teacher—with information that may be useful in their own efforts to improve student learning outcomes. These studies assist us in answering such questions as: What is ‘world-class’ education? and What characterises outstanding educational provision?

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