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52 stories
Week 07: Cutting-edge assessment
A program in WA is helping the learning profession become highly skilled, knowledgeable and engaged in excellent practice.
Through the Western Australian Monitoring Standards in Education program, ACER is developing innovative assessment materials to assist teachers and the WA Department of Education in monitoring student learning in science, and society and environment. The materials, which are based in part on short videos and magazines, are designed to support teaching and assessment in these important areas of the WA curriculum.
All states and territories obtain data on student achievement through the likes of the National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN), but, notes Ron Martin, a Senior Research Fellow in the Assessment and Reporting research program at ACER, NAPLAN and other national assessment programs to date haven’t covered the broad range of curriculum areas. ‘Science, and society and environment are two such areas,’ Ron notes.
While the WA Department of Education conducts the tests, ACER provides expertise in test development, expertise in trialling and, up until this year, expertise in psychometric analysis. The biggest challenge, Ron says, is obtaining good representative student samples for trialling the society and environment items.
The effort is worth it. ‘The program offers the WA Department of Education a better opportunity to study educational development, progress and change in a wider curriculum area on a longitudinal basis than is possible with just the national testing program,’ Ron says.
‘The purpose of the Monitoring Standards in Education program is to assist educators in identifying gaps in student progress, and to assist them in identifying gaps in their teaching for the purpose of developing their professional capabilities. It also provides evidence to guide government policy makers. The assessment is not just for policy purposes, though. Individual student results are also provided to parents.’
So has the Monitoring Standards in Education program had an impact? In a word, says Ron, yes. ‘According to national sampling, which occurs every three years, there has been improvement in science outcomes in WA,’ he says. ‘This may, at least in part, be due to the effect of the yearly Monitoring Standards in Education assessment in molding some teaching practices and attention to curriculum guidelines by WA science teachers.’
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Week 52: State of the art psychometric and statistical analysis
Week 51: Assessing civics and citizenship
Week 50: International research into teaching and learning
GOAL 1
Learners and their needs
every learner engaged in challenging learning opportunities appropriate to their readiness and needs
GOAL 2
The Learning Profession
every learning professional highly skilled, knowledgeable and engaged in excellent practice
GOAL 3
Places of learning
every learning community well resourced and passionately committed to improving outcomes for all learners
GOAL 4
A Learning Society
a society in which every learner experiences success and has an opportunity to achieve their potential
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Pursuing Quality and Equity through Evidence
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