Education Commons^™

Development And Piloting Of The Victoria University Student Dividend, Hamish Coates, Daniel Edwards

Dr Daniel Edwards

The VU Student Dividend reflects a new approach to improving learning in Australian tertiary education. It is a landmark study that sets an important precedent, being the first institution level assessment of learning outcomes conducted to monitor and improve the quality of education. The Victoria University (VU) Student Dividend was conceptualised by VU, and developed and implemented by the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER). The student assessment and graduate survey were piloted in 2008. The VU Student Dividend reflects an assessment of the extent to which VU’s courses and programs prepare students and graduates to engage productively in the …

Pat Science : Getting Good Assessment Down Pat, Geoff Masters

Prof Geoff Masters AO

A new school assessment resource in science from the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) has just been launched, following more than two years of development and trial testing. Called PAT Science, the new addition to the Progressive Achievement Tests series complements PAT Reading and PAT Maths, which are now widely used in Australian schools. PAT Science fills an identified need for better classroom information about the progress students make in their science learning between Year 3 and Year 10. By the time they reach 15 years of age, 13 percent of Australian students are classified as 'at risk' of …

Pisa : Frequently Answered Criticisms, Ray Adams

Prof Ray Adams

Studies such as PISA that attempt to compare outcomes across educational systems are expensive and difficult to implement. Further, the results of such studies are routinely criticized by educational commentators - particularly when the results are not consistent with their preconceived ideas about the relative merits and efficiencies of various educational practices and systems. This chapter discusses what is done to ameliorate the threats to the validity of PISA in five areas often targeted by commentators and reviewers as sources of invalidity in international comparisons. The five areas discussed are: (1) sampling - are the samples of students who undertake …

Pisa Science 2006 : International Results, John Cresswell

Dr John Cresswell

Throughout the world education authorities want to know the capacities that their students develop during their formative years at school. They want to know to what extent students have learned fundamental scientific concepts and theories and how well they can solve real-life problems involving science and technology. In order to provide answers to these questions, PISA provides an international benchmark. Unlike many traditional assessments of student performance in science, PISA is not limited to measuring students' mastery of specific science content. Instead, it measures the capacity of students to identify scientific issues, explain phenomena scientifically and use scientific evidence. These …

Best Start 2008 : Kindergarten Literacy Assessment, Department Of Education And Training, Nsw : Data Analysis Report, June 2008, Marion O. Meiers, Siek Toon Khoo

Marion Meiers

Broadening Assessment, Improving Fairness? Some Examples From School Science, Jan Lokan, Ray Adams, Brian Doig

Prof Ray Adams

Following a review of equity issues in testing, especially in relation to science, two assessment programmes in school science, each of which was designed both to probe a range of aspects of student performance and for use in a large-scale study, are discussed. Both have been developed and used in the 1990s, one is Australia only and the other in many countries. The programmes and the range of aspects they attempt to assess are described and results are cited for several groups of students. Issues of fairness through broadening of large-scale assessments to include tasks requiring students to construct their …

Student Progress, Charting Of, Geoff Masters, Ray Adams, M Wilson

Prof Ray Adams

This article looks at the charting of students' progress. It examines learning as an active process, conventional achievement testing, testing for conceptual understanding, constructing ordered outcome categories, and collecting observations.

A Sense Of Direction In Criterion-Referenced Assessment, Geoff Masters, John Evans

Prof Geoff Masters AO

This paper describes some experimental work undertaken by the authors with teachers in a number of Australian schools to provide criterion-referenced assessments of student achievement. In these investigations we work closely with individual teachers using assessment materials developed within each school. We analyze students' performances on these materials, provide teachers with computergenerated reports, and assist teachers to use these reports to monitor the progress of their students and to diagnose individual strengths and weaknesses.