Research Projects

The original agreement to undertake this project between ACER and the Association of Independent Schools of Victoria (AISV) was signed on 24 December 2004.  The initial phase of the project during 2005 ($40,000) involved a ‘Desktop’ review of ‘best practice’ related to educational effectiveness.  Three briefing papers resulted:

  1. “A Review of Evidence-based Indicators of Educational Effectiveness in School Education”;
  2. ” Working-out What Works: A Review of Evidence-based Research on Effective Teaching and Learning Strategies for Students with Learning Difficulties”; and
  3. “Evidence for the kinds of feedback data that support both student and teacher learning”.

In response to the contents of these briefing papers, and following consultative discussions with the AISV Board and Executive throughout 2005 and early in 2006, it was agreed to conduct a second phase pilot project among a sample of AISV member schools during the July-December 2006 period. This work focused on the provision of feedback data to schools with the aim of building educational effectiveness.

The AISV-ACER Agreement for this work that was signed on 8 May 2006, involves ACER building an online system for delivering a Teachers’ Perceptions of their Work Environment survey.  The online delivery is to be complemented by the (non-preferred) option of paper-based delivery.  Responses from the paper-based delivery will be entered by proxy into the online system for integration with responses collected online.  The survey consists of 25 items, each requiring a response in one of 4 ordered response categories, ranging from Strongly Disagree to Strongly Agree in five domains: Morale, Leadership Support, Peer Support, Goal Congruence and Professional Development.

Graphical reports based on the data collected online and via paper-based surveys will be available to Principals, and a system-wide report will be available to AISV administrative personnel.  Where a school has multiple campuses, each campus is to be treated as a separate entity with its own report, and an aggregated report covering all campuses for the school will also be available. The pilot will include 10–12 schools, at least one of which is multi-campus. The eventual deployment during 2007 (and beyond) is likely to service up to 213 Victorian independent schools (i.e., the entire AISV membership).