Education Commons^™

“Assessing Big History Outcomes: Or, How To Make Assessment Inspiring.”, Mojgan Behmand

Mojgan Behmand

Sharing The Assessment Reform Story, Hilary Hollingsworth

Dr Hilary Hollingsworth

A new web-based resource is chronicling the experiences of schools as they undertake assessment reform.

Diving Deeper With Assessment, Hilary Hollingsworth

Dr Hilary Hollingsworth

ACER is helping educators to understand and implement assessment practices for positive classroom change and improved learning.

Class 6 Girls And Boys In Afghanistan 2013 : Comparing Outcomes Of Girls And Boys From A Learning Assessment Of Mathematical, Reading And Writing Literacy, Alla Routitsky, Rachel Stanyon, Maurice Walker

Maurice Walker

This report presents the results of an assessment of reading, writing and mathematical literacy of Class 6 students in 13 provinces in Afghanistan in relation to the gender of students. The data were collected in late 2013. The purpose of Monitoring Trends in Educational Growth (MTEG) is to provide information to education policy makers on the quality of education outcomes in Afghanistan. In addition MTEG will inform educational practitioners by clearly demonstrating what students at Class 6 can and cannot do in an assessment situation. One of the policy areas that MTEG aims to inform is gender equality. It is …

National Assessment In India, Maurice Walker

Maurice Walker

A large-scale and long-term national assessment program is now underway in India. As Maurice Walker explains, the project is expected to inform policy and program delivery in India.

The Cure For Early Grades Assessment Difficulties? Take A Tablet, Maurice Walker

Maurice Walker

Maurice Walker reports on an innovative approach to assessment using tablets to monitor educational development in the early years of schooling.

Class 6 Girls And Boys In Afghanistan 2013 : Comparing Outcomes Of Girls And Boys From A Learning Assessment Of Mathematical, Reading And Writing Literacy, Alla Routitsky, Rachel Stanyon, Maurice Walker

Dr Alla Routitsky

This report presents the results of an assessment of reading, writing and mathematical literacy of Class 6 students in 13 provinces in Afghanistan in relation to the gender of students. The data were collected in late 2013. The purpose of Monitoring Trends in Educational Growth (MTEG) is to provide information to education policy makers on the quality of education outcomes in Afghanistan. In addition MTEG will inform educational practitioners by clearly demonstrating what students at Class 6 can and cannot do in an assessment situation. One of the policy areas that MTEG aims to inform is gender equality. It is …

Towards A Unified Theory Of Assessment, Geoff Masters

Prof Geoff Masters AO

Attempts to categorise educational assessments as either ‘formative’ or ‘summative’ no longer serve us well and the time has come to develop a more unified theory of assessment.

Leaders Of School Improvement Share The Journey, Sharon Clerke

Sharon Clerke

ACER's evaluation of ‘turnaround’ schools has revealed that strong school leaders do not undertake leadership alone, but build leadership capacity around them. Sharon Clerke reports.

Same Year, Same School, Same Curriculum: Different Mathematics Results, Catherine Pearn

Catherine Pearn

Year 4 students from a large metropolitan school in Melbourne were tested using the One Minute Tests of Basic Number Facts and a paper and pencil Number Screening Test developed by the author and colleagues. Observation of classes during the assessment procedures highlighted the vast difference in the students’ speed and accuracy when recalling basic facts and the types of strategies they used when solving whole number arithmetic tasks. When the results were analysed there were differences noted in the class results and when the results were presented to the teachers their reactions to these results varied considerably. This paper …

A Cross-Institutional Initiative In Digital Assessment, Anne-Marie Chase, Diane Robbie, Bella Ross, Ekaterina Pechenkina

Dr Anne-Marie Chase

Assessing Maths Literacy: Learning From The Pisa Experience, Ross Turner

Ross Turner

A new book that draws on ACER’s work on one of the world’s largest international surveys is providing educators with important insights about how assessment can be used to improve learning outcomes.

Addressing The Learning Needs Of All Students, Geoff Masters

Prof Geoff Masters AO

Year-level curriculum expectations in our schools sometimes impose artificial ceilings on student learning, and many of Australia’s most able students are not achieving their true potential as a result. Geoff Masters explains why.

Study Flags Civics And Citizenship Knowledge, Julian Fraillon

Julian Fraillon

The percentage of Australian school students with the skills and knowledge required to be active and informed citizens has remained stable between 2010 and 2013, but there is room for improvement, as Julian Fraillon explains.

The 'Literacy' Idea, Ross Turner

Ross Turner

A central reason why researchers and practitioners refer to domain literacy is to draw attention to the kinds of things students learn in the domain. In a traditional learning domain the focus might be on the acquisition of discrete facts, skills and procedures that have little obvious connection or utility. In a learning domain with a literacy orientation, the focus is on applying the domain’s facts, skills and procedures to support creativity and inventiveness, to solve novel problems and to deal with the kinds of challenges that life presents outside the classroom. In the case of mathematics, for example, a …

Improving Assessment Processes And Quality In Medical Specialisations, Daniel Edwards

Dr Daniel Edwards

ACER’s work for a number of specialist colleges in medicine is contributing to higher quality education, as Daniel Edwards explains.

The Future Of Learning Assessments, Geoff Masters

Prof Geoff Masters AO

Processes for assessing student learning are undergoing fundamental transformation, according to Geoff Masters.

Remember The Students: Lessons For Learning Outcomes Assessments, Jacob Pearce, Daniel Edwards

Dr Jacob Pearce

Assessments of student learning outcomes are important for institutional and system-level quality assurance, but should also help students improve their knowledge and skills.

Remember The Students: Lessons For Learning Outcomes Assessments, Jacob Pearce, Daniel Edwards

Dr Daniel Edwards

Assessments of student learning outcomes are important for institutional and system-level quality assurance, but should also help students improve their knowledge and skills.

Review Recommends Tertiary Entrance Changes, Geoff Masters, Gabrielle Matters

Prof Geoff Masters AO

A review by Gabrielle Matters and Geoff Masters of senior assessment and tertiary selection processes in Queensland has recommended changes to meet future education needs.

Review Recommends Tertiary Entrance Changes, Geoff N. Masters, Gabrielle Matters

Dr Gabrielle Matters

A review by Gabrielle Matters and Geoff Masters of senior assessment and tertiary selection processes in Queensland has recommended changes to meet future education needs.

Assessing Vocational Competencies In Civil Engineering: Lessons From Ahelo For Future Practice, Jacob Pearce

Dr Jacob Pearce

There has been much interest in the notion of vocational competencies of late. The pressing question, however, is how to measure vocational competencies. In order to contribute to this ‘how’, the results of the Civil Engineering strand of the recent Assessment of Higher Education Learning Outcomes (AHELO) Feasibility Study are discussed. The focus of the assessment instrument was explicitly on “above content” areas of the domain, and the assessment framework provides an example of a construct which articulates certain domain-specific competence components. This paper draws specific attention the Constructed Response Tasks (CRTs) in the instrument and discusses the results of …

Scaling Procedures For Icils Test Items, Eveline Gebhardt, Wolfram Schulz

Dr Wolfram Schulz

This chapter describes the procedures used to analyze and scale the ICILS test items that were administered to measure students’ computer and information literacy (CIL).

Computer-Based Assessment Systems, Julian Fraillon, Ralph Carstens

Julian Fraillon

ICILS was the first IEA study to collect student achievement and questionnaire data on computer rather than on paper. This chapter describes the key aspects of the computerbased test delivery system used in ICILS. It also details some of the challenges of using computer-based systems to collect student data in a crossnational large-scale assessment such as ICILS.

Icils Test Development, Julian Fraillon

Julian Fraillon

The ICILS assessment was developed over a 20-month period from April 2010 to December 2012. Most of this work was conducted by the international study center (ISC) at the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) in collaboration with national research coordinators (NRCs) and the project advisory committee (PAC). SoNET Systems conducted the software development for the test modules. This chapter provides a detailed description of the test development process and review procedures as well as the test design implemented for the ICILS field trial and main survey.

Towards Understanding How To Assess Help-Seeking Behavior Across Cultures, Ryan Baker, Amy Ogan, Erin Walker, Ma.Mercedes Rodrigo, Jose Soriano, Maynor Castro

Ryan S.J.d. Baker

In recent years, there has been increasing interest in automatically assessing help seeking, the process of referring to resources outside of oneself to accomplish a task or solve a problem. Research in the United States has shown that specific help-seeking behaviors led to better learning within intelligent tutoring systems. However, intelligent tutors are used differently by students in different countries, raising the question of whether the same help-seeking behaviors are effective and desirable in different cultural settings. To investigate this question, models connecting help-seeking behaviors with learning were generated from datasets from students in three countries – Costa Rica, the …