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Week 13: Learning from experience
Information from an international assessment program helps educators work towards a society in which every learner experiences success and has an opportunity to achieve their potential.
The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is providing governments and systems with detailed information about how countries are preparing young people for life beyond school. There are lessons for the quality and equity of Australian schooling.
This international common assessment, led by ACER, enables governments to compare how students perform on a set of common tasks in close to 80 countries. According to Sue Thomson, Head of Educational Monitoring and Research, ‘The program enables us to see internationally what students get out of school, but it also enables us to look at subgroups within a country and between countries.’
As to international comparisons, ‘We’re able to monitor outcomes relative to similar countries,’ Sue says. ‘In Australia, for example, reading scores in general have declined, which hasn’t happened in other countries, so that data can usefully inform policies and practices, and identify areas for further research.
As to educational disadvantage, says Sue, ‘PISA shows that there are continuing disparities, and the data enable Australia’s governments to look at the educational outcomes of disadvantaged subgroups and at whether these have changed over the nearly ten years we’ve gathered PISA data.’
As to the PISA rankings, Sue explains, ‘Statistical uncertainties mean rankings aren’t necessarily accurate.’ More useful, she says, are the actual scores that identify students performing below an appropriate level. ‘Changes in the rankings might be significant,’ she says, ‘but from a statistical point of view whether a country moves up or down isn’t always important.’
Mind you, PISA’s rankings do encourage an investigation of successful systems. ‘Take Finland,’ she says, ‘which performs well as a result of a complex mix of cultural factors to do with valuing education, and the quality, status and remuneration of teachers, as well as teaching methods, curriculum design, diagnostic assessment and intervention, and the like. It makes no sense to try to copy an entire educational culture, but it does make sense to learn from the educational methodology typical in successful education systems.’
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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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