Educational Assessment, Evaluation, and Research Commons^™

Professional Practice Research: Ensuring Teacher Development Through A Critical Approach To Professional Learning, Tania Aspland, Ian Macpherson

2009 - 2019 ACER Research Conferences

Concurrent Session Block 3

Teachers Are The Key : Strategies For Instructional Improvement, Lynette Virgona

2009 - 2019 ACER Research Conferences

Concurrent Session Block 3

Targeting The Things That Matter, Ben Jensen

2009 - 2019 ACER Research Conferences

Concurrent Session Block 3

Building Teacher Capacity And Raising Reading Achievement, Kathryn Glasswell

2009 - 2019 ACER Research Conferences

Concurrent Session Block 3

Developing And Implementing An Explicit School Improvement Agenda, Michele Bruniges

2009 - 2019 ACER Research Conferences

School improvement is a high-stakes enterprise, as difficult as it is important. While the broad agenda of school improvement is unassailable, the concept has become entangled with debates about the use of standardised assessment data for the purposes of public accountability. The risk of this is that data per se are devalued in the eyes of teachers. Effective use of data by teachers is, however, the crux of school improvement. For student outcomes to improve, teachers need an accurate understanding of individual students’ strengths and weaknesses. Moreover, they need the capacity to translate this understanding into improved conditions for teaching …

Effective Teaching Practices : Lessons From Mathematics, Mike Askew

2009 - 2019 ACER Research Conferences

Concurrent Session Block 2

A Personal And Collective Commitment To A Focus On Improvement, Mark Campling, Stephen Savvakis, Jane Sedgman

2009 - 2019 ACER Research Conferences

Concurrent Session Block 2

The Influence Of Teaching Strategies On Student Achievement In Higher Order Skills, Patrick Griffin

2009 - 2019 ACER Research Conferences

Concurrent Session Block 2

Effective Strategies For Implementing Differentiated Instruction, John Munro

2009 - 2019 ACER Research Conferences

Concurrent Session Block 2

Improving School Practices For Aboriginal And Torres Strait Islander Students : The Voices Of Their Parents And Carers, Brian Giles-Brown, Gina Milgate

2009 - 2019 ACER Research Conferences

Concurrent Session Block 2

Lessons For Improvement From International Comparative Studies, John Ainley

2009 - 2019 ACER Research Conferences

Concurrent Session Block 2

Walking The Walk : The Need For School Leaders To Embrace Teaching As A Clinical Practice Profession, Stephen Dinham

2009 - 2019 ACER Research Conferences

Concurrent Session Block 1

Transforming Education Through The Arts : Creating A Culture That Promotes Learning, Brian Caldwell, Tanya Vaughan

2009 - 2019 ACER Research Conferences

Concurrent Session Block 1

Differentiated Classroom Learning, Technologies And School Improvement : What Experience And Research Can Tell Us, Kathryn Moyle

2009 - 2019 ACER Research Conferences

Concurrent Session Block 1

Improving schools with technologies

Building Professional Capability In School Improvement, Helen Timperley

2009 - 2019 ACER Research Conferences

Concurrent Session Block 1

Using Data To Drive School Improvement, Helen Wildy

2009 - 2019 ACER Research Conferences

Concurrent Session Block 1

Review Of The Overcoming Indigenous Disadvantage : Key Indicators Report, Australian Council For Educational Research (Acer)

Indigenous Education Research

In May-June 2012, the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) conducted a review of the Overcoming Indigenous Disadvantage (OID): Key Indicators report on behalf of the Steering Committee for the Review of Government Service Provision. Stakeholder feedback was invited through several different means: an email survey, telephone interviews, participation in small group discussions and written submissions. Public sector users of the OID report made up a large proportion of the stakeholders who contributed to the review. Indigenous and non-Indigenous stakeholders across a wide range of organisations participated in the consultations.

The review found a range of different stakeholder views in …

Children’S Independent Mobility : Walking To School And Road Safety Knowledge : 8 To 12 Year Olds, Catherine Underwood

Children’s Independent Mobility and Active Transport

Road safety knowledge is essential for children walking to school so they can safely navigate traffic environments. At the same time walking to school increases children’s awareness of their neighbourhood and also has a positive influence on their health and wellbeing.

Preparing Australian Students For The Digital World : Results From The Pisa 2009 Digital Reading Literacy Assessment, Sue Thomson, Lisa De Bortoli

OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) Australia

In PISA 2009, the assessment of digital reading literacy was offered as an international option for the first time. The digital reading literacy assessment assessed 15-year-old students’ ability to read, understand and apply digital texts. Australia and eighteen other countries or economies participated in this assessment. This report presents the results of the PISA digital reading literacy assessment for Australia. It presents the results for Australia as a whole, and where relevant makes comparisons to the other participants in the study. Results are also reported for the Australian states and territories and for different social groups within Australia. Overall, Australian …

Students' Participation In And Valuing Of Civic Engagement At School, Wolfram Schulz, Julian Fraillon

Civics and Citizenship Assessment

The IEA International Civic and Citizenship Education Study studied the ways in which young people in lower secondary schools are prepared to undertake their roles as citizens in a wide range of countries including Europe, Latin America, and the Asian-Pacific region. ICCS was the third IEA study designed to measure contexts and outcomes of civic and citizenship education and was linked to the 1999 IEA Civic Education Study (CIVED). A central aspect of the study was the assessment of student knowledge about a wide range of civic-related issues. ICCS gathered data from more than 140,000 Grade 8 (or equivalent) students …

The Role Of Civic Participation In National And School Curricula, John Ainley, Tim Friedman

Civics and Citizenship Assessment

Civic and citizenship education is increasingly conceptualized in national curricula within a lifelong learning perspective that encompasses formal curricula (that specify content and approaches in a subject or set of subjects), non-formal curricula (through co-curricular activities in schools) and informal curricula (through a school and classroom ethos that embodies citizenship values). One review of education policies in Europe documents attempts to encourage ‘active citizenship’ supported by ‘democratic schools’ offering a ‘participatory school culture’. However, there is evidence of a gap between declarations of principle and the implementation of these principles in schools as well as between policies and practices. This …

Social Origin And Citizenship Participation In Latin American Schools, Juan Castillo

Civics and Citizenship Assessment

Empirical research in political participation has consistently shown that participation is characteristic of those with higher socio-economic status and formal education (Brady, Verba, & Schlozman, 1995; Lijphart, 1997; Dalton, 1988; Han, 2009; Marien, Hooghe, & Quintelier, 2010). Socio-economic status differences among citizens are accentuated in societies with high economic inequality as the Latin American ones (De Ferranti et al., 2003; Deininger & Squire, 1996; Dion, 2007; Hoffman & Centeno, 2003; Korzeniewicz & Smith, 2000), and therefore it would be expected to find political inequality in terms of participation in this region (Côrtes & Dubrow, 2011). Such a link is not …

Civic Participation At School And School-Based Community Participation, Elisa Caponera, Bruno Losito, Paola Mirti

Civics and Citizenship Assessment

The idea of civic and citizenship education underpinning ICCS recognizes that civic and citizenship knowledge, dispositions to engage and attitudes related to civic and citizenship education are linked to the variety of contexts where students live, including family background, classrooms, schools, and the wider community (Schulz, Ainley, Fraillon, Losito, Kerr, 2008; Schulz, Ainley, Fraillon, Kerr, Losito, 2010). Particular importance is given to the actual opportunities students have to actively participate in school life and in the community where the school is located. The first part of this paper will provide a general overview of how schools in the countries participating …

Teach For Australia Pathway : Evaluation Report Phase 2 Of 3, Paul R. Weldon, Phillip Mckenzie, Elizabeth Kleinhenz, Kate Reid

Initial Teacher education

The evaluation of the Teach for Australia Pathway was commissioned by DEEWR and commenced in March 2010. The purpose of the evaluation is to assess whether the delivery of the Pathway can be modified to better achieve intended outputs and outcomes, and whether the Pathway is achieving expected outcomes.

This report (Part 2) concerns the second of three phases of the evaluation of the TFA Pathway. The first report (Part 1) was designed to provide a summary of data gathered on the operation of the Pathway in its initial stages. Data for that report were collected via site visits with …

Print And Digital Reading In Pisa 2009 : Comparison And Contrast, Juliette Mendelovits, Dara Ramalingam, Tom Lumley

OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA)

PISA was administered for the fourth time in 2009. Since in each administration, one of reading, maths or science is chosen as the major domain, the 2009 survey marked the first time that a domain (in this case, reading) was revisited as the major focus of the assessment. This allowed a full review of the framework for reading literacy and the inclusion of new elements to reflect the way that reading has changed since 2000 (OECD, 2009). One such change is the increasing prevalence of digital texts. The assessment of digital reading in the PISA 2009 cycle, undertaken by 19 …

How Well Do Young People Deal With Contradictory And Unreliable Information On Line? What The Pisa Digital Reading Assessment Tells Us, Tom Lumley, Juliette Mendelovits

OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA)

There is sometimes an assumption that young people, as ‘digital natives’, are able to use online information effectively, including selecting and negotiating digital texts that are not only relevant for what they need, but also are likely to provide reliable information. This paper examines the question of how well young people are in fact able to recognise whether information is likely to be trustworthy. While some small-scale work has been done in this area, this paper draws on data from the first large-scale international assessment of online reading, the Digital Reading Assessment (DRA) that was part of the Organisation for …

A Framework For Predicting Item Difficulty In Reading Tests, Tom Lumley, Alla Routitsky, Juliette Mendelovits, Dara Ramalingam

OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA)

Results on reading tests are typically reported on scales composed of levels, each giving a statement of student achievement or proficiency. The PISA reading scales provide broad descriptions of skill levels associated with reading items, intended to communicate to policy makers and teachers about the reading proficiency of students at different levels. However, the described scales are not explicitly tied to features that predict difficulty. Difficulty is thus treated as an empirical issue, using a post hoc solution, while a priori estimates of item difficulty have tended to be unreliable. Understanding features influencing the difficulty of reading tasks has the …

Some Drivers Of Test Item Difficulty In Mathematics, Ross Turner

OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA)

This paper is one of four contributions to the symposium session at the AERA’s 2012 Annual Meeting titled Exploring Reading and Mathematics Item Difficulty: Teaching and Learning Implications of PISA Survey Data. The author presents a rubric used to analyse mathematics test items developed for use in the OECD’s PISA survey. The rubric focuses on a set of mathematical competencies that are components of mathematical literacy. The work on which this report is based suggests that demand for activation of these competencies functions as a significant driver of item difficulty, which potentially has implications for the teaching and learning of …

Measuring And Rewarding School Improvement, Geoff N. Masters

Program monitoring and evaluation

There is now a widely held view that the most effective strategy for improving countries’ educational performances is to improve the day-to-day work of schools. This view follows several decades of significant increases in government expenditure on school education in developed countries, often with little or no accompanying evidence of improvements in the quality or equity of educational provision. A number of countries have introduced incentives – both rewards and sanctions – in an attempt to ‘drive’ improvements in the work of schools. Many of these incentive schemes have followed the model adopted in business of specifying and measuring desired …

The On Track Survey 2011 Longitudinal Report : The 2007 Cohort 4 Years On, Sheldon Rothman, Catherine Underwood

Vocational, adult and professional education research

This report examines the pathways of young people who left a Victorian government school in 2007. The participants in this On Track longitudinal survey comprised 2346 Year 12 or equivalent completers and 1130 early school leavers. These young people were first contacted in 2008 as part of the annual On Track survey and were interviewed in each subsequent year until 2011. In the first year after leaving school, 70% of Year 12 or equivalent completers were participating in education and training, comprising 39% at university, 20% studying for a certificate and 11% in an apprenticeship or traineeship. By the fourth …