Conference Proceedings
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Conference Proceedings Contents Foreword v Keynote papers Professor John Gardner 1 Assessment for teaching: the half-way house. Dr Margaret Forster 5 Informative Assessment – understanding and guiding learning. Professor Helen Wildy 9 Making local meaning from national assessment data: NAPNuLit. Professor Patrik Scheinin 12 Using student assessment to improve teaching and educational policy. Concurrent papers Prue Anderson 15 What makes a difference? How measuring the non-academic outcomes of schooling can help guide school practice. Peter Titmanis 20 Reflections on the validity of using results from large scale assessments at the school level. Professor Helen Timperley 21 Using Assessment Data for improving teaching practice. Juliette Mendelovits and Dara Searle 26 PISA for teachers: Interpreting and using information from an international reading assessment in the classroom. Katrina Spencer and Daniel Balacco 31 Next Practice: What we are learning about teaching from student data. Professor Val Klenowski and Thelma Gertz 36 Culture-fair assessment leading to culturally responsive pedagogy with indigenous students. Jocelyn Cook 44 An Even Start: Innovative resources to suport teachers to better monitor and better support students measured below benchmark. David Wasson 47 Large Cohort Testing - How can we use assessment data to effect school and system improvement? Dr Stephen Humphry and Dr Sandra Heldsinger 57 Do rubics help to inform and direct teaching practices? Poster presentations 63 Conference program 65 Perth Convention and Exhibition Centre floorplan 67 Conference delegates 69 Research Conference 2009 Planning Committee Professor Geoff Masters CEO, Conference Convenor, ACER Dr John Ainley Deputy CEO and Research Director National and International Surveys, ACER Ms Kerry-Anne Hoad Manager, Centre for Professional Learning, ACER Ms Marion Meiers Senior Research Fellow, ACER Dr Margaret Forster Research Director ACER Copyright © 2009 Australian Council for Educational Research 19 Prospect Hill Road Camberwell VIC 3124 AUSTRALIA www.acer.edu.au ISBN 978-0-86431-821-3 Design and layout by Stacey Zass of Page 12 and ACER Project Publishing Editing by Maureen O’Keefe, Elisa Webb and Kerry-Anne Hoad Printed by Print Impressions Research Conference 2009 iv Foreword Geoff Masters Australian Council for Educational Research Research Conference 2009 is the fourteenth national Research Conference. Through our research conferences, ACER provides significant opportunities at the national Professor Geoff Masters has been Chief Executive level for reviewing current research-based knowledge in key areas of educational Officer of the Australian Council for Educational policy and practice. A primary goal of these conferences is to inform educational Research (ACER) since 1998. Prior to joining policy and practice. ACER, he was a member of the Faculty of Education at the University of Melbourne. Research Conference 2009 brings together key researchers, policy makers and Prof Masters is also Chair of the Education teachers from a broad range of educational contexts from around Australia and Network of the Australian National Commission overseas. It addresses the important theme of assessment and student learning. The for UNESCO, a member of the International conference will explore the information that can be gained from quality classroom Baccalaureate Research Committee, a Past President of the Australian College of Educators; and system wide assessment and how effective teachers use that information to Founding President of the Asia-Pacific Educational guide their teaching. Research Association and a member of the Business Council of Australia Education, Skills and We are sure that the papers and discussions from this research conference will Innovations Taskforce. make a major contribution to the national and international literature and debate on He has a PhD in educational measurement from key issues related to the effective use of data to support teachers to identify starting the University of Chicago and has published points for teaching, diagnose errors and misunderstandings, provide feedback to several books and numerous journal articles in the guide student action, evaluate the effectiveness of their teaching, and to monitor field of educational assessment. individual progress over time. For more than 25 years, Prof Masters has been an international leader in developing better measures We welcome you to Research Conference 2009, and encourage you to engage of educational outcomes. in conversation with other participants, and to reflect on the research and its Prof Masters has led work on the practical connections to policy and practice. implementation of modern measurement theory to large-scale testing programs and international achievement surveys. Prof Masters recently investigated options for an Australian Certificate of Education on behalf of the Australian Government and was the author of a recent paper released by the Business Council of Australia, Restoring our Edge in Education Making Australia’s Education System its Next Competitive Professor Geoff N Masters Advantage (2007). Chief Executive Officer, ACER V Research Conference 2009 vi Keynote papers Assessment for teaching: The half-way house Abstract Evidence based teaching is the conscientious, explicit and judicious use This presentation considers the merits of best evidence in making decisions and challenges associated with using about the education of individual assessment information to inform students. and improve teaching. The concept of assessment information is briefly Introduction unpacked and considered in terms of a series of questions relating, for I hope David Sackett and his colleagues example, to the need to develop (1996, p.71) will forgive my tweaking John Gardner teachers’ assessment competence; of their definition of evidence-based Queen’s University, Belfast Ireland their understanding of error, reliability medicine to serve our focus. For and validity; and their appreciation of me it sums up the manner in which John Gardner is a Professor of Education in the difference between assessments assessment information should be the School of Education at Queen’s University, used to inform teaching. It should be Belfast. His main research areas include policy used for formative purposes and and practice in education, particularly in relation summative judgements. Examples from done with care and attention, made to assessment. His recent publications include a variety of international contexts will transparent to all concerned (and Assessment and Learning (Sage, 2006) and his be drawn upon to illustrate major most importantly the students), and it recent research activities have included studies should be used appropriately to inform on assessment and social justice, assessment issues. As the title suggests there is a by teachers (ARIA), and consulting pupils on hint of a reservation in an otherwise decisions. assessment (CPAL). He has over 100 peer- strong endorsement for the focus The basic premise of this conference, reviewed publications and has managed research of the conference. Using assessment projects exceeding £2.3 million in total since that effective teachers are those 1990. He is President Elect of the British data appropriately can make for a who use assessment to guide their Educational Research Association, a fellow of more effective teacher but it cannot teaching, might therefore seem entirely the Chartered Institute of Educational Assessors, guarantee more effective learning. The reasonable. As the blurb says, this a fellow of the British Computer Society and a argument is made that students must member of the UK Council of the Academy of teacher effectiveness may be associated Social Sciences. be enabled to play a full part in using with such processes as the identification assessment information to support of starting points for teaching, error and improve their learning. Using diagnosis, feedback generation, progress assessment information should explicitly monitoring and evaluating the teaching be a joint enterprise between teachers itself. Who wouldn’t be happy with and their students. that? Well me for one, at least not entirely. It’s not that I would object to any of these activities; indeed I would hope that I am committed to them in my own teaching. However, it is only part of the story for me. But more of that later. Let me begin with the central theme – using assessment information to inform teaching. Not meaning to be overly pernickety, I would nevertheless like to unpack the concept of ‘assessment information’. Arguably all assessment information comes from one of two types of data. The first is score-type data that is objectively generated, for example: 50 per cent for choosing correct answers to half of the items in a multiple choice question test (MCQ). The sense of Assessment and Student Learning: Collecting, interpreting and using data to inform teaching 1 ‘objectivity’ in this case is that there system-wide (e.g. UK-wide: Yelis and accept scores and grades on externally is no judgement1 or interpretation in PIPS, Durham University; US: NAEP; administered tests as indisputable the scoring process. The answers are Scotland: SSA – see key at end of and conclusive, trusting to the definitive and the scoring can proceed paper) and local authority and schools generally systematic and scrupulous on a purely secretarial basis, most (e.g. England and Wales: Fischer administration of the examinations frequently by optical