Group work in elementary science:Towards organisational principles for supporting pupil learning

Group work has been promoted in many countries as a key component of elementary science. However, little guidance is given as to how group work should be organised, and because previous research has seldom been conducted in authentic classrooms, its message is merely indicative. A study is reported, which attempts to address these limitations. Twenty-four classes of 10–12-year-old pupils engaged in programmes of teaching on evaporation and condensation, and force and motion. Both programmes were delivered by classroom teachers, and made extensive use of group work. Pupil understanding progressed from pre-tests prior to the programmes to post-tests afterwards, and results suggest that group work played a critical role. Organisational principles are extrapolated from the findings, which could be readily adopted in classrooms

Six critical issues in senior secondary drama performance assessment in Australia

During a study on Drama performance assessment, the many challenges of the assessment environment and assessment conditions became evident, along with the rich benefits and opportunities that performance assessment brings. This paper investigates one senior secondary performance assessment task from each of the six school sites which are aligned to one of the critical issues that emerged as themes in the analysis of data. These critical issues identify performance as fundamental to Drama, establish students’ aspirations when performing, describe students’ motivations for their performance efforts, investigate the capstone nature of Drama performance tasks, evaluate performance as a form of formative assessment, and establish the audience’s role as an influencing factor on the assessment of Drama performances. This paper describes and problematises these critical issues, foreshadowing future areas for research in Drama assessment while allowing for new understandings of Drama performance assessment to be understood in the context of existing research