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Week 43: Educational monitoring in Euskadi
ACER’s educational monitoring supports a learning society, whether the language of classroom instruction is Spanish, Basque or English – or all three.
As Australia grapples with education policies to address the problem of monolingualism, ACER is conducting language research in the Basque Autonomous Community of northern Spain (Euskadi), where all students are taught in at least two languages. One of them is Basque. The other is Spanish, one of today’s world languages. Now some schools are also teaching in another world language, English.
As Tom Lumley, a linguist and Senior Research Fellow in ACER’s Assessment and Reporting research program explains, ‘Some students are now learning subjects such as chemistry and geography in English, physical education and economics in Spanish, maths and history in Basque. We know that learning further languages improves your brain’s functionality in all sorts of ways, but the research we’re conducting is investigating whether the addition of a third language of instruction is a step too far.’
Tom and a small team of Assessment and Reporting colleagues is working with Grupo MESE (from Complutense University in Madrid) and the European Foundation Society and Education on a longitudinal research project designed to shed light on that question.
The three-year study is tracking two cohorts of students who were in Grades 4 and 7 in 2011, comparing their achievement in reading, maths and science in schools where instruction is in Spanish and Basque, and in schools where instruction is in Spanish, Basque and English.
‘ACER is providing the tests, drawing on test items from the Progressive Achievement Tests (PAT) for mathematics, science and reading, and the International Benchmark Tests (IBT) in English, maths and science,’ says Tom.
In the third year of the study the team will also be drawing on test items from the International Schools' Assessment (ISA) in order to broadly align the PAT and IBT results with the ISA scale. ‘Because the ISA is modelled on PISA, using the ISA scale will help us to relate the outcomes in this study to PISA results.
‘The goal,’ says Tom, ‘is to learn more about the impact of languages of instruction on student achievement.’
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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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