EDST 5114 — INVESTIGATING ISSUES IN CURRICULUM AND ASSESSMENT

SCAFFOLD FOR PLANNING ASSIGNMENT 1

Logical Sequence Component Your explanation

Title Clear description of your topic and Building teacher’s competence
nature of investigation to use student assessment data.

Topic – broad focus Focus of the investigation

on an aspect of:  A change?
Curriculum practice?  A development?
 Historical perspective?
Assessment and/or  Comparative analysis of
reporting practice? approaches?
 An imperative?
Relationship between  A kind of perspective?
both?
 Other?

Describe the Site of the investigation: An extensive system of student

context  Local, state, national, global, assessment: national-, system-
Sites of curriculum  Australian and/or International and school-level student
practice this  Policy, rules, assessment.
investigation takes  Traditions & conventions of
into account or occurs practice
within  Theories of practice
 Political imperatives, ideologies
 societal assumptions, values
 the media
 Tensions between 1 or more
these?

The problem The issue, the problem is….

The case…. A crisis was/has been identified…
It’s significance? This is manifest in tensions between
policy & practice, emerging trends in a
system, differences in points of view,

Rationale for the investigation: Why is

this important?
How I plan to go Methods adopted to investigate this
about investigating issue, approach you will take…
this problem  Comparative analysis
 Historical research
 critique using a particular theoretical
perspective
 other?

Literature: What we What has been written about this

know so far issue?
 What do experts/theorists/
academics/practitioners say about this
topic?
Different views held about this issue?
Key issues they raise
This can be structured in themes
depending on types of critique,
analysis, research.

Discussion & Where to from here?

conclusions What is the way forward?
Can the matter be resolved? How?
Possible options? Best one and why?

Implications Significance of your findings for future

practice?
What educators can learn about the
nature of curriculum/assessment &
reporting practice as a result of this
investigation?
Conclusion Summary of what you found…options
for further research…

Evaluation and assessment frameworks have no value if they do not lead to the
improvement of classroom practice and student learning => effective link to classroom
practice = most critical point in designing evaluation and assessment framework.
Channels which are less well articulated in Australia are: building teacher capacity for
student formative assessment. While transparency of information and high-quality data
are essential for a well-functioning evaluation and assessment system, there has been
comparatively less focus on articulating how the existing data and information should be
used for improvement and on ensuring that school agents have the capacity to use the
data and feedback made available to them in order to improve their practices. There is no
particular national guidance or vision on how the results of evaluation and assessment
activities feed back into classroom practice.

Missing links between different elements of evaluation and assessment framework in

Australia:
- Within specific components of the overall evaluation and assessment framework:
There is some lack of clarity about what should be the formative uses of
NAPLAN results by teachers (see Chapter 3).
Another area for further development, in light of the availability of rich data from student
assessment and testing, is improving the data handling skills of school agents (see
Chapters 3 and 5). Our interviews also revealed that the increasing complexity of some
outcome reporting has not been accompanied by a good understanding by parents and
other stakeholders of the concepts behind the ways the data are presented and compared

Some inadequacies in teachers’ skills for assessment and to use assessment data:
- A survey of Australian teachers reveals that “methods for assessing student
learning and development” were among the areas of greatest need for professional
development as identified by teachers (McKenzie et al., 2008).
- The utility and sound use of data, of course, depends on teachers’ assessment literacy and
ability to appropriately integrate assessment data and learning in classroom instruction,
including the appropriate use of standardised tests such as NAPLAN.

Barneveld, C. (2008), “Using Data to Improve Student Achievement”, Research

Monograph No. 15, The Literacy and Numeracy Secretariat, Ontario,
www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/literacynumeracy/inspire/research/Using_Data.pdf.

Australian NAPLAN testing: in what ways is this a ‘wicked’ problem?

… part of the problem is the assumption that NAPLAN results becomes not a measure of
student performance, but rather the measure of ‘school performance’, or even more
concerning, the measure of teacher’s performance.