Educational Assessment, Evaluation, and Research Commons^™

Does Financial Literacy Contribute To Food Security?, Katherine Grace Carman, Gema Zamarro

Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications

Food insecurity, not having consistent access to adequate food for active, healthy lives for all household members is most common among low income households. However, income alone is not sufficient to explain who experiences food insecurity. This study investigates the relationship between financial literacy and food security. We find that low income households who exhibit financial literacy are less likely to experience food insecurity.

Uwezo: Monitoring Children’S Competencies In East Africa, Acer

Assessment GEMS

Uwezo, meaning ‘capability’ in Kiswahili, is an initiative in which the competencies of schoolaged children in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda are measured to obtain information that encourages changes in educational policy and practice. Uwezo began as a four-year initiative (2009–2013) and it is envisaged that it will run for at least another five-year period (Uwezo, 2011). Uwezo’s goal is to contribute to the improvement of the quality of education. Annual household surveys are implemented to assess the basic literacy and numeracy competencies of school age children across Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda. Uwezo believes that this information will raise public awareness …

An Exploratory Critical Study Of Questioning Strategies Posed By Early Childhood Teachers During Literacy Blocks, Angela H. Baker Ms.

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine the cognitive types and functions of questions orally posed by early childhood teachers in kindergarten through 3rd grade during a 90-minute literacy block. The cognitive types of questions were determined by the criteria established using Hess’ Cognitive Rigor Matrix (Hess, Jones, Carlock, & Walkup, 2009). The functions of the posed questions were determined by criteria based on the work of Costa (2001), Hughes (as cited in Fusco, 2012), and Lowery (as cited in Fusco, 2012). This study examined questioning strategies used by 12 early childhood teachers from a Northeast Tennessee School District. …

The 'Literacy' Idea, Ross Turner

Assessment GEMS

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 …

The Annual Status Of Education Report Survey: Monitoring Learning Levels Of Children In Rural India, Australian Council For Educational Research (Acer)

Assessment GEMS

The Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) survey is a household-based survey of school-aged children in all rural districts in India. It is the only annual survey that yields data on children’s basic learning levels in this country. It evolved out of the work of a non-governmental organisation called Pratham. The ASER survey aims to obtain reliable, district-level estimates of the status of rural children’s school enrolment and skills in reading and arithmetic, and to measure the change in these estimates over time.

Beyond The Pencil: Expanding The Occupational Therapists’ Role In Helping Young Children To Develop Writing Skills, Hope K. Gerde, Tricia D. Foster, Lori E. Skibbe

The Open Journal of Occupational Therapy

Occupational therapists (OTs) play an important role in early childhood classrooms as vital members of the educational team, particularly for young children’s writing development. Children’s emergent writing is a foundational literacy skill, which begins to develop well before they enter elementary school. However, early childhood classrooms are lacking in supports for early writing development. OTs are experts in guiding the development of early writing skills in young children and, therefore, should be considered as critical members of the early literacy curriculum team. This paper identifies the critical role emergent writing plays in early childhood literacy development and how to effectively …

An Evaluation Of A Summer Reading Program At A Public Middle School In A Southeastern State, Michael Waiksnis

Education Dissertations and Projects

Academic achievement loss during the summer is an established fact that is backed by a dearth of research. Most students generally lose academic ground in math during the summer. However, summer learning loss in reading is not shared by all subgroups of students. Students living in poverty lose, on average, 3 months of academic learning while other students gain or stay the same over the summer months. This is of major concern to schools and districts as they struggle to close the achievement gap.

A middle school in a southeastern state created a reading program that guaranteed access to books …

Investigating The Literacy, Numeracy And Ict Demands Of Primary Teacher Education, Helen De Silva Joyce, Susan Feez, Eveline Chan, Stephen Tobias

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

The pre-service programs delivered in Australian teacher education institutions are expected to graduate students who meet externally determined standards, including standards in literacy, numeracy and information and communication technology. These programs are also expected to educate future teachers in professional knowledge and practice, as well as prepare them to engage in professional learning continuously throughout their careers. This paper reports on the first phase of a project that investigated the literacy, numeracy and ICT demands of assessment tasks across the four years of the Bachelor of Education (Primary) program at a regional university.

Teaching Reading: A Shared Vision And A Shared Responsibility 2012-2013: Principals As Literacy Leaders In Ceo Schools, Deslea Konza, Paul Woodley, Sam De Leo, Helen Dixon

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

The PALL Plus professional learning and research project was a collaborative effort between the Fogarty Learning Centre at Edith Cowan University and 16 Catholic primary schools within the Western Australian Catholic Education Office (CEO). It was initiated by the principal of Star of the Sea Primary School, Tim Emery, who coordinated involvement of the other schools and managed contractual responsibilities on behalf of the CEO. The project was based on the Principals as Literacy Leaders (PALL) pilot project funded by the Commonwealth Government in 2009-2010, and originally developed in partnership with the Australian Primary Principals Association, Griffith University and the …

Measure For Measure : A Review Of Outcomes Of School Education In Australia, John Ainley, Eveline Gebhardt

Assessment and Reporting

There have been a plethora of research reports providing information about the achievements of students in Australian schools and how those achievements differ among jurisdictions and among groups of students. However, each report has often been viewed in isolation from other similar studies. This report is intended to provide an integrated appraisal of the results of the international and national achievement surveys conducted since 1994 but with some references to earlier studies. In addition to limiting the task to manageable proportions, this time span corresponds to the widespread introduction of modern measurement methods so that there is a better basis …

A Teacher's Guide To Pisa Reading Literacy, Sue Thomson, Kylie Hillman, Lisa De Bortoli

OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) Australia

This report focuses on Australian students' performance on the PISA items that have been released in reading literacy. It includes an overview of the PISA Reading Framework, Australia's results in the PISA 2009 international assessment , examples of responses and marking guides, and the context behind achievement, e.g. enjoyment of reading, how often they read and high-level strategies for learning.

Literacy And The Most Marginalised Children, Megan Robinson

International Developments

Researchers, practitioners and policy makers interested in the field of inclusive education gathered at a roundtable meeting to discuss synergies across the Australian and international development education policy arenas regarding literacy interventions for the most marginalised children.

International Developments (No.3) 2013

International Developments

Table of contents for this issue: (a) Making a difference in developing countries; (b) UNICEF and UNESCO; (c) Regional focus : Africa; (d) Literacy and the most marginalised children.

The Next Information Literacy Challenge: Partnering To Promote Deeper Engagement With Information And Better Writing, Wendy Holliday, Kacy Lundstrom, Anne R. Diekama, Sheri Haderlie

Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Summer Reading Loss: A Mixed-Methods Study Of Parent Development And Home-Based Summer Reading, Morgan V. Blanton

Education Dissertations and Projects

This dissertation utilized a mixed-methods, quasi-experimental design to investigate the impact of parent development on rising third graders' summer reading losses as measured by the difference in May and August oral reading fluency scores. Title I parents and students from three schools in a rural North Carolina school district participated in a parent development session that focused on reading strategies to use at home. Parents and Title I teachers were in contact during the summer via telephone or face-to-face and students kept a reading log in order to collect data regarding reading routines. Quantitative data were collected using a pretest/posttest …

Making A Difference : Improving Outcomes For Indigenous Learners, Michele Lonsdale

Indigenous Education Research

This publication highlights ACER’s contributions to Indigenous Educational research over the past decade. This contribution has included research, policy analysis, program evaluation, professional development, and the development of assessment tools and other resources.

Footprints In Time : Who Am I? And Renfrew Word Finding Vocabulary Test : Report On Wave 2 Data, Sarah Buckley, Catherine Underwood, Nola Purdie

Indigenous Education Research

This report presents the results of administration of the Who Am I? and the Renfrew Word Finding Vocabulary Test for the LSIC Wave 2 data collection in 2009. Who am I? is a developmental assessment that requires the child to write their name, copy shapes, write letters, numbers and words in a small booklet, with simple instructions and encouragement from the interviewer. Who am I? is not language dependent and is suitable for children with limited English. The assessment takes about 10 minutes to complete and is suitable for preschool children and children in the first two years of …

Developing An Understanding Of Data Management Education: A Report From The Data Information Literacy Project, Jake Carlson, Lisa Johnston, Brian Westra, Mason Nichols

Libraries Faculty and Staff Presentations

This paper describes the initial results from the Data Information Literacy (DIL) project designed to identify the educational needs of graduate students across a variety of science disciplines and respond with effective educational interventions to meet those needs. The DIL project consists of five teams in disparate disciplines from four academic institutions in the United States. The project teams include a data librarian, a subject-specialist librarian, and a faculty member representing a disciplinary group of students. Interviews of the students and faculty members present a detailed snapshot of graduate student needs in data management education. Following our study, educational programs …

A Multi-Institutional Project To Develop Discipline-Specific Data Literacy Instruction For Graduate Students, Sarah Wright, Michael Fosmire, Jon Jeffryes, Marianne Stowell Bracke, Brian Westra

Libraries Faculty and Staff Presentations

What data stewardship skills are needed by future scientists to fulfill their professional responsibilities and take advantage of opportunities in e-science? How can academic librarians contribute their expertise in information organization, dissemination and preservation to better serve modern science? With support from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), four research libraries have formed a partnership to address these questions. The aims of the partnership are to identify the data stewardship skills, including data management and curation, needed by graduate students at the research discipline level, to identify trends that extend across the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) …

Functional Story-Based Instruction About Hand Washing To Teach Emergent Literacy Skills And Hand Washing Skills To Three Elementary Students With Significant Intellectual Disabilities, Glenda Hyer

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This study used a multiple baseline across participants design to evaluate the effects of Functional Story-Based Instruction about hand washing on the independent and correct emergent literacy responses and independent and correct hand washing responses of three elementary students with significant intellectual disabilities in small inclusive reading groups. Data were collected during baseline, intervention, and generalization phases, and then analyzed using visual analyses. The result of the study indicated a functional relationship between the independent and dependent variables. Social validity indicated Functional Story-Based Instruction about hand washing was an effective approach for teaching both emergent literacy skills and hand washing …

Café Culture: Promoting Empowerment And Pleasure In Adolescent Literacy Learning, Brandi Gribble Mathers, Amanda J. Stern

Reading Horizons: A Journal of Literacy and Language Arts

The 160 third, seventh, and eleventh-graders involved in this study agreed, almost unanimously, that reading was“important.” Participants cited the empowering benefits of reading as they justified this opinion. However, with regards to the enjoyment of reading, fewer middle and high school participants reported “liking” reading than their elementary counterparts and fewer reported reading in their free time.

One solution to this dilemma involves providing adolescent students with a context devoted solely to pleasure reading. In doing so, educators can look to an institution that boasts both an historical link to literate culture and current-day pop culture appeal: the coffeehouse. When …

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 …

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 …

Teacher Empowerment In The Implementation Of Response To Intervention: A Case Study, Evie Taff Barge

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Response to Intervention (RtI) is a data-driven process that supports the academic needs of students through targeted interventions to address specific identified areas of weakness. When implemented effectively, RtI aids students at the onset of learning concerns and can remediate learning problems which have, in the past, led to students being classified as learning disabled. Few studies have recognized the role of teachers at the frontlines in implementing RtI, and many teachers are struggling with the complicated RtI process. Literacy and mathematics are the academic focuses for RtI in this study due to their importance for success in school and …

Australian Core Skills Framework (Acsf), Philippa Mclean, Kate Perkins, David Tout, Kath Brewer, Linda Wyse

Vocational, adult and professional education research

The Australian Core Skills Framework (ACSF) provides a rich, detailed picture of real life performance in the five core skills of: Learning, Reading, Writing, Oral Communication and Numeracy.

These skills are essential for individuals to participate effectively in our society. They are inextricably interwoven into all parts of our lives, being directly or indirectly linked to the physical, social and economic wellbeing of individuals, workplace productivity and safety, community interaction and capacity, and ultimately to Australia’s economic and community wellbeing. The ACSF reflects contemporary use of English in Australia.

The ACSF has been developed to facilitate a consistent national approach …

Enhancing Education, Sheldon Rothman, David Slattery, Sarah Buckley, John Ainley

Indigenous Education Research

The ‘Little children are sacred’ report concluded that improving the quality of education provided the key to solving, or at least ameliorating, the incidence of child sexual abuse in Aboriginal communities. The report identified poor educational outcomes as being at the heart of the exclusion of Aboriginal people from confidently participating in either their own culture or mainstream culture.

Two years after the release of the ‘Little children are sacred’ report and after the introduction of the NTER, data were collected on the health and development of all Australian children. Data from the Australian Early Development Index (AEDI) …

Performance Comparison Between Ib School Students And Non-Ib School Students On The International Schools’ Assessment (Isa) And On The Social And Emotional Wellbeing Questionnaire, Ling Tan, Yan Bibby

Monitoring Learning

This report examines the performance of students enrolled in the IB Primary Years Programme (PYP) and the IB Middle Years Programme (MYP) on the ACER International Schools’ Assessment (ISA) compared with non-IB students from the same ISA cohorts. The ISA is an assessment created especially for students in international schools in Grades 3 to 10. The assessment asks both multiple-choice and open-ended questions in the areas of writing, reading and mathematics, and provides international normative information about student performance. The Reading and Mathematical Literacy are based on the internationally endorsed frameworks of the OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). …

Literacy And Numeracy Learning: Lessons From The Longitudinal Literacy And Numeracy Study For Indigenous Students, Nola Purdie, Kate Reid, Tracey Frigo, Alison Stone, Elizabeth Kleinhenz

ACER Research Monographs

In 2000, ACER commenced the Longitudinal Literacy and Numeracy Surveys for Indigenous Students (ILLANS), which set out to track the development of English literacy and numeracy skills in a group of Indigenous students from school entry through the early years of schooling and beyond, to establish a data-rich picture of educational opportunities for Indigenous students. Phase 1 of ILLANS collected data from Indigenous students at 13 schools across Australia that had been nominated by education systems as examples of good practice in education for Indigenous students. The first three years of the study were reported in the monograph Supporting …

Improving Educational Outcomes In The Northern Territory : Preliminary Advice To The Northern Territory Department Of Education And Training, With A Particular Focus On The Ongoing Improvement Of Students’ Literacy And Numeracy Achievements, Geoff N. Masters

School and system improvement

The primary focus of this review is on strategies for improving literacy and numeracy outcomes in the Northern Territory. Clearly, the role of school education is much broader than the development of students literacy and numeracy skills, but these are foundational skills on which almost all other school learning is based. It is also clear from research that low levels of literacy and numeracy by the middle years of school are associated with lower school completion rates and a range of post-school outcomes, including higher levels of unemployment, lower lifetime earnings, and poorer health outcomes. Although the primary focus of …