National Assessment Program : science : Year 6 : 2003 : technical report

This report describes the technical aspects of the National Year 6 Science Assessment and summarises the main activities associated with the data collection, the data collection instruments and the analysis and reporting of the results. Chapter 2 reviews the sample design for the assessment and describes the sampling process and the sample achieved. Chapter 3 summarises the test development and implementation procedures and the procedures for instrument construction and compliance with the test specification. Chapter 4 reviews the assessment administration procedures, discusses the cleaning of data collected in the assessment and the treatment of missing data and invalid students. Chapter 5 addresses the main features of the procedures used for weighting the student data and the replication procedures used to account for the sample design. Chapter 6 summarises the results of the analyses undertaken, concentrating on the results of the Rasch analysis and providing information about the calibration procedures for item locations and student ability estimates. Chapter 7 describes and analyses the procedures undertaken to review the quality of the links between the various test forms and for the equating of the various test forms and their scaling for reporting. Chapter 8 discusses the results in terms of students proficiency on the scientific literacy scale. The scale links students results to descriptions of their understandings and skills in the assessment domain. Chapter 9 comments on some issues that may be relevant in the 2006 iteration of the sample study and may need further consideration in terms of the test construction, its equating to the 2003 assessment and its analysis

National assessment program : ICT literacy years 6 & 10 report 2005

Australia\u27s national goals for schooling assert that when students leave school they should be: confident, creative and productive users of new technologies, particularly information and communication technologies, and understand the impact of those technologies on society. The Australian National Assessment Program includes the systematic assessment of the extent to which this goal is being achieved through triennial sample surveys of students in Years 6 and 10. This report is based on the assessment of ICT literacy conducted in October 2005. It describes the development of a computer-based tool for assessing ICT literacy among school students and the application of that tool with a nationally representative sample of approximately 7,400 students from Years 6 and 10 in nearly 520 Australian schools. The report describes the development, validation and refinement of a progress map that identifies a progression of ICT literacy. It describes the ICT literacy levels of Australian school students overall and for particular groups of students

Contextualizing a university-school STEM education collaboration: Distributed and self-activated leadership for project outcomes

Implementing educational reform requires partnerships, and university-school collaborations in the form of investigative and experimental projects can aim to determine the practicalities of reform. However, there are funded projects that do not achieve intended outcomes. In the context of a new reform initiative in education, namely, science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education, this article explores the management of a government-funded project. In a university school partnership for STEM education, how can leadership be distributed for achieving project outcomes? Participants included university personnel from different STEM areas, school teachers and school executives. Data collected included observations, interviews, resource materials, and video and photographic images. Findings indicated that leadership roles were distributed and selfactivated by project partners according to their areas of expertise and proximal activeness to the project phases, that is: (1) establishing partnerships; (2) planning and collaboration; (3) project implementation; and (4) project evaluation and further initiatives. Leadership can be intentional and unintentional within project phases, and understanding how leadership can be distributed and selfactivated more purposefully may aid in generating more expedient project outcomes