‘One assessment doesn’t serve all the purposes’ or does it? New Zealand teachers describe assessment and feedback

Within the Asia-Pacific community, the New Zealand Ministry of Education has been one of few educational authorities to adopt an Assessment for Learning (AfL) framework and actively promote formative uses of assessment. This paper reports the results of a qualitative study in which eleven New Zealand secondary teachers in two focus groups discussed their conceptions of assessment and feedback. These data were examined to see how teachers defined and understood assessment and feedback processes to identify how these conceptions related to AfL perspectives on assessment. Categorical analysis of these data found teachers identified three types of assessment (formative, classroom teacher–controlled summative and external summative) with three distinct purposes (improvement, reporting and compliance, irrelevance). Feedback was seen as being about learning, grades and marks, or behaviour and effort; these types served the same purposes as assessment with the addition of an encouragement purpose. This study showed that although these New Zealand teachers appeared committed to AfL, there was still disagreement amongst teachers as to what practices could be deemed formative and how to best implement these types of assessment. Additionally, even in this relatively low-stakes environment, they noted tension between improvement and accountability purposes for assessment.     

Using multi-group confirmatory factor analysis to evaluate cross-cultural research: identifying and understanding non-invariance

Multi-group confirmatory factor analysis (MGCFA) allows researchers to determine whether a research inventory elicits similar response patterns across samples. If statistical equivalence in responding is found, then scale score comparisons become possible and samples can be said to be from the same population. This paper illustrates the use of MGCFA by examining survey results relating to practising teachers' conceptions of feedback in two very different jurisdictions (Louisiana, USA, n?=?308; New Zealand, n?=?518), highlighting challenges which can occur when conducting this kind of cross-cultural research. As the two contexts had very different policies and practices around educational assessment, it was considered possible that a common research inventory may elicit non-equivalent responding, leading to non-invariance. Independent models for each group and a joint model for all participants were tested for invariance using MGCFA and all were inadmissible for one of the two groups. Inspection of joint model differences in item loadings, scale reliabilities, and scale inter-correlations established the extent of non-invariance. This paper discusses the implications of non-invariance within this particular study and identifies difficulties in using an inventory in cross-cultural settings. It also provides suggestions about how to increase the likelihood that a common factor structure can be recovered.     

Educational Media

Dean Jamison, et al. The Effectiveness of Alternative Instructional Media: A Survey (March 1973, 72 pp.)

Dean Jamison with Steven Klecs, The Cost of Instructional Radio and Television for Developing Countries (March 1973, 57 pp.)

Emile G. McAnany, Radio's Role in Development: Five Strategies of Use (September 1973 with a 1976 afterword, Info. Bulletin No. 4, 29 pp.)

Henry T. Ingle, Communication Media and Technology: A Look at Their Role in Non-Formal Education Programs (August 1974, Info. Bulletin No. 5, 62 pp.)

Lois Joy Lester, A Directory of Sources of Assistance on Educational Technology for Development (November 1975, Info. Bulletin No. 6, 90 pp.)

A Sourcebook on Radio's Role in Development: (October 1976, Info. Bulletin No. 7, 85 pp.)

Therese Silverman, Tele-Niger: Adapting an Electronic Medium to a Rural African Context (undated, but late 1976, Info. Bulletin No. 8, 45 pp.)

Development Communication Report (an apparently irregular newsletter)

Keith W. Mielke and James W. Swinehart's Evaluation of the Feeling Good Television Series (Children's Television Workshop, One Lincoln Plaza, New York, N.Y. 10023—$10.00, paper)     

Curriculum continuity

Over the last decade teachers have seen significant changes to the status and development of Continued Professional Development. In 1995 with the creation of the Teacher Training Agency we began to see the regulation of Continued Professional Development through the development of national standards. The Quality Start school improvement project (1995–2000) evolved amidst this change and provided a coherent and consistent professional development pathway for the teachers involved. Single Regeneration funding provided the opportunity for Sandwell L.E.A. to target resources to schools with the aim of raising standards through a school improvement project which involved a package of support linked to key school priorities.     

Community Involvement in a Place-Based Program for Hawaiian High School Students

This study examined the development of community involvement in a place-based high school program for at-risk youth. Teachers and community members founded the program to address concerns about low achievement and high dropout rates among Native Hawaiians. In addition to funding, community members provided program development, supervision of students' service-learning, cultural consultation, political support, and teacher and curriculum development. Collaborations were sustained by open communication, the development of a common set of values among a diverse group of people, and flexibility of community members' schedules. Challenges to community involvement included a lack of support from school leadership, teacher burnout, and occasional interpersonal conflicts.     

Who Will Censor? BC Tel and the Oliver “Hate” Web-Site

The Internet has been described by many critics as providing a friendly home for racist web-sites, whose number has been steadily growing. Many of these sites display vicious anti-Semitic, anti-black, and anti-gay propaganda. However much they disgust most people, in the US they are protected by the First Amendment. Canada, by contrast, has hate discrimination provisions in its Criminal Code. Canadians seem to be much more willing than Americans to abridge freedom of expression when the speech is hateful. Various European countries take a stronger stand than Canada in their determination to combat racism. In this talk, I will explore the Canadian position in the context of the case of Oliver, BC. It was the location of an Internet Service Provider (ISP), Fairview Technology Centre, accused of hosting a number of hate sites. Attempts to deal with this accusation constitute the central part of the paper.     

Multiple Factor Analysis

The knowledge explosion in combination with an overcrowded curriculum at all educational levels is causing many educators to place greater emphasis on attitude conceptualization. This paper confronts two interrelated problems, that problem dealing with the psychological concept of attitudes and the problem of attitude measurement. Conceptually, attitudes are explored from an affective, cognitive, behavioral, and biologic dimension. The result is a comprehensive attitude concept. The problem of attitude measurement is not that attitudes exist, nor that they are specific or general, but lies in the way that they are organized. With the current emphasis on computerized research and data analysis, it is astonishing that multiple factor analysis has been so infrequently used for attitude validation and instrumentation. As a measurement and analytic technique, multiple factor analysis provides the intrinsic power to isolate and identify attitudinal factors. Multiple factor analysis is a measurement technique designed to assess construct validity. As such, it unites psychometrics with psychological theory. Factor analysis as a computational technique and as a scale construction technique is explored. The principal component method of factor analysis is reviewed. Multiple factor analysis assists in the process of attitude scale construction in the following ways: 1.) determines the content (factorial) validity of a series of attitude statements by ascertaining whether they measure a single unitary characteristic or a complex of characteristics as reflected in an item intercorrelation matrix; 2.) contributes to the determination of construct validity by ascertaining the smallest number of factors that can be postulated to account for item intercorrelations 3.) provides the statistical research strategy upon which predictive and assessment instruments can be empirically determined from an unrotated factor matrix; and, 4.) serves in general as an objective basic research tool through which psychological traits underlying human attitudes can be derived.