4,719 research outputs found
The life of data: Evolving national testing
No full textTo this point, the collection has provided research-based, empirical accounts of the various and multiple effects of the National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) in Australian schooling as a specific example of the global phenomenon of national testing. In this chapter, we want to develop a more theoretical analysis of national testing systems, globalising education policy and the promise of national testing as adaptive, online tests. These future moves claim to provide faster feedback and more useful diagnostic help for teachers. There is a utopian testing dream that one day adaptive, online tests will be responsive in real time providing an integrated personalised testing, pedagogy and intervention for each student. The moves towards these next generation assessments are well advanced, including the work of Pearson’s NextGen Learning and Assessment research group, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) move into assessing affective skills and the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority’s (ACARA) decision to phase in NAPLAN as an online, adaptive test from 2017..
UU Webinar 2: Sam Sellar on time and value in digitalised higher education
No full text<p>Title: The investment of time: Divergent theses on the value of higher education</p>
<p>Abstract: This webinar will focus on what is valuable in and about higher education. It will then discuss this in relation to Edtech and deliberate where Edtech can and cannot contribute to supporting the sector.</p>
<p>Speaker: Sam Sellar</p>
<p>Bio: Sam Sellar is Dean of Research (Education Futures) and Professor of Education Policy at the University of South Australia. Sam’s research focuses on education policy, large-scale assessments and the datafication of education. Sam also works closely with teacher organisations around the world to understand the impact of digitalisation on teacher professional autonomy. His most recent book is titled Algorithms of education: How datafication and artificial intelligence shape policy (University of Minnesota Press), co-authored with Kalervo N. Gulson and P. Taylor Webb.</p>
<p>Link to Sam’s website: https://people.unisa.edu.au/Sam.Sellar </p>
<p>Date of event: 22 June 2023</p>
National testing from an Australian perspective
No full textThe Australian National Assessment Program Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN), introduced in 2008, involves annual census testing of students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 in nearly all Australian schools. While this collection deals with the specific case of Australian national testing, the issues raised here have broader salience in other schooling systems around the globe. This program is managed by the Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA), which was established to oversee national testing and the new Australian curriculum. NAPLAN is managed by ACARA, which was specifically established under national legislation to develop an Australian curriculum and the National Assessment Program. However, in this chapter the focus is on the perceived impacts of national testing on student wellbeing. Despite intentions for NAPLAN to help target educational interventions, Cumming, Wyatt-Smith and Colbert show that teachers in their study did not find that it aided timely identifications of, or interventions with, students at risk in literacy and numeracy
The life of data: Evolving national testing
No full textThis chapter is concerned with the life and time of data, seeking to understand and theorise the current and possible futures of testing, both utopian and dystopian. It considers how new relations are constructed through data, such as those resulting from National Assessment Program - Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) and international testing and how they reflect a topological move within culture. The introduction of national testing has affected a different kind of space in Australian education the space of media and public debate about the aims and outcomes of schooling. Indeed, new relationships between measurement and value are being reconfigured by the proliferation of social data in multiple sites of everyday life. This chapter has also shown that NAPLAN data in Australia have a life that extends to the reworking of political systems and educational structures, to the reconfiguration of what is valued in schools and to the potential integration of that data with other testing and assessment systems
Why Do Countries Participate in PISA? Understanding the Role of International Large-Scale Assessments in Global Education Policy
No full textCamilla Addeyand Sam Sellar This chapter examines the role of international large-large scale assessments (ILSAs) in global education policy (GEP) . Firstly, the chapter theorizes ILSA participation in relation to GEP analytical frameworks and new modes of global governance. Secondly, an analysis of empirical data on ILSA participation informs discussion of rationales for participation, which are grouped under seven headings: (1) evidence for policy; (2) technical capacity building; (3) funding and aid; (4) international relations; (5) national politics; (6) economic rationales; and (7) curriculum and pedagogy. This analysis provides insight into the complexity through which the global education landscape is being constituted and suggests that uses of ILSA data are shaped by the sociopolitical contexts of participating countrie
Letter from Hayao (Sam) Chuman to the American Friends Service Committee
No full textA letter from Hayao (Sam) Chuman to the American Friends Service Committee, donating a portion of his redress check from the U.S. government to the Committee.The Chuman (Hayao "Sam" and Toshiko) Papers documents the World War II experiences of Hayao "Sam" and Toshiko Chuman, who were Kibei Nisei born in the United States but grew up and completed school in Japan, and then returned to the U.S. prior to the war. It chronicles the Chuman's incarceration from the Santa Anita Assembly Center, through Jerome, Rohwer, Tule Lake camps, and the Santa Fe and Crystal City internment camps as well as their struggle for restoring their U.S. citizenships in the 1960s. The digital collection consists of mostly textual material, including correspondence, affidavits, incarceration camp records, lease agreements, financial documents, receipts, pamphlets, and booklets
Letter from Hayao (Sam) Chuman to Earl Warren and "Attorney General Clark"
No full textA letter from Hayao (Sam) Chuman to Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Earl Warren and "Attorney General Clark". The letter is a request to regain his citizenship after renouncing his U.S. citizenship and requesting repatriation to Japan during his time incarcerated in World War II.The Chuman (Hayao "Sam" and Toshiko) Papers documents the World War II experiences of Hayao "Sam" and Toshiko Chuman, who were Kibei Nisei born in the United States but grew up and completed school in Japan, and then returned to the U.S. prior to the war. It chronicles the Chuman's incarceration from the Santa Anita Assembly Center, through Jerome, Rohwer, Tule Lake camps, and the Santa Fe and Crystal City internment camps as well as their struggle for restoring their U.S. citizenships in the 1960s. The digital collection consists of mostly textual material, including correspondence, affidavits, incarceration camp records, lease agreements, financial documents, receipts, pamphlets, and booklets
Local experiences, global similarities: Teacher perceptions of the impacts of national testing
No full textSince 2008, Australian schoolchildren in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 have sat a series of tests each May designed to assess their attainment of basic skills in literacy and numeracy. These tests are known as the National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN). In 2010, individual school NAPLAN data were first published on the MySchool website which enables comparisons to be made between individual schools and statistically like schools across Australia. NAPLAN represents the increased centrality of the federal government in education, particularly in regards to education policy. One effect of this has been a recast emphasis of education as an economic, rather than democratic, good. As Reid (2009) suggests, this recasting of education within national productivity agendas mobilises commonsense discourses of accountability and transparency. These are common articles of faith for many involved in education administration and bureaucracy; more and better data, and holding people to account for that data, must improve education..
NAPLAN, achievement gaps and embedding Indigenous perspectives in schooling: Disrupting the decolonial option
No full textIn 2004, the Queensland State Government rolled out the Embedding Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Perspectives in Schooling (EATSIPS) program. The policy was relaunched in 2009. This initiative aimed to improve Indigenous student learning outcomes, improve relationships between schools and Indigenous communities, and to develop a deeper understanding and respect for traditional and contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures amongst all students (EATSIPS 2011: 13). We are interested in the social justice possibilities of EATSIPS and its potential contribution to Reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australia. We are also interested in whether schooling practices informed by EAT-SIPS could reflect decolonising opportunities. This point is illustrated by the fact that, from 2009, it was mandatory for all state-school teachers to undergo professional development in EATSIPS, and all state schools underwent an EATSIPS audit of their policy, curriculum and pedagogical practices..
Questioning the validity of the multiple uses of NAPLAN data
No full textAcross Australia NAPLAN data is being used in a range of ways to serve multiple purposes. The validity of this practice is critically examined in this chapter by drawing on the largest collection and analysis of empirical data on multiple facets of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander education in state schools to date. Validity, in this context, is very much concerned with the accuracy with which NAPLAN tests assess the skills or attributes of literacy and numeracy and the decisions that are made based on those test scores. At a time of increasing student diversity and increasing accountability, it is important to explain how by holding teachers to account through the reuse of assessment data for ‘second-order purposes,’ unintended damaging consequences are occurring particularly in terms of equity. This argument will build on an analysis of the quality of pedagogical decisions taken in the schools of this study to illustrate how such decisions constitute a threat to validity
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