Student performance in high-stakes examinations based on content area in senior secondary (VCE) physical education

Background: Senior secondary physical education courses for certification continue to evolve with curricula reform occurring to ensure content is contemporary, student learning outcomes are maximised and assessment practices are valid for determining certification of students. The content of examinable senior secondary physical education courses privilege theoretical concepts over student physical performance of motor skills and this is reflected in the use of written assessment of cognitive outcomes in many courses internationally.

Purpose: Student examination data were analysed from the year 12 (exit year) written examination of Victorian Certificate of Education (VCE) Physical Education to determine if student performance varied by Area of Study (content). Additionally, it investigated whether there was a relationship between student performance in each of the four Areas of Study examined and overall examination performance and considered the alignment of curriculum, assessment and pedagogy and the implications the findings may have on the teaching of VCE Physical Education in the future.

Methods: A secondary data analysis of student results from the 2011 (n?=?9323; M?=?5212, F?=?4111) and 2012 (n?=?8781; M?=?5011, F?=?3770) VCE Physical Education (Victoria, Australia) examinations were conducted. Examination questions were categorised by content, and means and standard deviations (SD) for discrete and continuous data were calculated, and categorical variables were presented as percentages. Regression analysis was also performed to establish the relationship between student cohort size and examination scores. An independent sample t-test was used to explore the examination scores and each Area of Study scores across 2011 and 2012. A one-way ANOVA were performed to investigate the differences of each Area of Study scores between examination grades from UG to A+.

Results: The results showed a positive correlation between VCE Physical Education student cohort size in a school and examination score in 2011 and 2012. Student performance differed across both years (2011 and 2012) and across Areas of Study within each of the years analysed. Students performed significantly lower on questions relating to the ‘planning, implementing and evaluating a training program’ Area of Study in 8 of the 11 possible grades (2011) and 10 of the possible 11 grades (2012) than in each of the other Areas of Study.

Discussion and conclusions: This study reveals that student performance on the external VCE Physical Education examination is not consistent across all content areas (Areas of Study). This may suggest that student difficulties in answering questions based on content in ‘planning, implementing and evaluating a training program’ result from topic or content difficulty rather than process or question difficulty. From these findings, implications for teaching examinable physical education effectively include the use of experiential learning and practical experiences to provide students with experiences from which they can draw knowledge when completing written assessment tasks. Additionally, the importance of having the required content knowledge to teach examinable physical education confidently for pre-service and in-service teachers is discussed.     

The Early Reading Research: The impact of instructional psychology

The Early Reading Research (ERR), is a six-year research project investigating the most effective approaches to: improving reading standards; ensuring that every child can reach age and skill appropriate targets in reading; and, preventing the occurrence of reading difficulties. This article reviews the educational and psychological research into teaching reading and relates recent findings to theories and research emerging from instructional psychology, which underpins the 'framework for teaching reading' used within the ERR. Two studies are then summarised which evaluated the impact of the ERR reading framework. Study 1 involved a two-year experimental study where the progress of children following the ERR framework during reception and Year 1, was compared to that of children taught to read through their usual classroom methods. Study 2 involved a one-year study where the progress of a sample of children within the ERR was compared to children following the National Literacy Project. The article concludes by highlighting some implications of the ERR for educational psychologists (EPs), the field of special education and the National Literacy Strategy.     

Social Networks and Archival Context: From Project to Cooperative Archival Program

This article highlights the objectives and outcomes of the multi-year Social Networks and Archival Context (SNAC) research and demonstration project and discusses related developments to establish a large-scale sustainable cooperative for maintaining information about creators of archival collections, leveraging the Encoded Archival Context—Corporate Bodies, Persons, and Families (EAC-CPF) standard. The article discusses processes developed to derive EAC-CPF records from existing EAD finding aids, MARCXML records, and original authority records, enrichment of those records from other sources, and the creation of a prototype research resource, providing integrated access to dispersed archival collections and the social-historical context of the collections.     

Establishing an Equitable and Fair Admissions System for an Online Doctoral Program

The field of educational technology has seen marked growth from just a small number of distance-based doctoral programs to nearly 20 today. Creating and sustaining a quality doctoral program of any kind requires a substantial amount of work; the additional challenges of online programs both increases and changes the nature of the efforts required. Among these challenges is creating an admissions process that treats people fairly, does not create a burdensome system for applicants or those involved in the selection process, and ensures the selection of a solid foundation of high quality candidates with whom faculty can mentor, who add value to the program, and who can benefit from the program. This paper explores common admissions requirements among institutions offering a distance or hybrid doctorate in educational technology and examines the specific admissions system used by the Department of Educational Technology at Boise State University.     

CrossRef's Text and Data Mining Services

CrossRef ( http://www.crossref.org/ ) is an association of scholarly publishers that develops shared infrastructure to support more effective scholarly communications. In May 2014, CrossRef launched CrossRef Text and Data Mining Services for its members. This article covers the thinking behind CrossRef launching this service, and the particular problems it aims to address around the collection of full‐text content for the purposes of text and data mining (TDM). It explains the technical aspects of the service for researchers and lets publishers know what they need to provide to CrossRef in order to participate and how to do so. It will also describe the pilot of CrossRef's TDM Services, and information on publisher uptake since the launch and how this can be measured, and the costs for joining or using the service.     

Searching ClinicalTrials.gov and the International Clinical Trials Registry Platform to inform systematic reviews: what are the optimal search approaches?

Background:

Since 2005, International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) member journals have required that clinical trials be registered in publicly available trials registers before they are considered for publication.

Objectives:

The research explores whether it is adequate, when searching to inform systematic reviews, to search for relevant clinical trials using only public trials registers and to identify the optimal search approaches in trials registers.

Methods:

A search was conducted in ClinicalTrials.gov and the International Clinical Trials Registry Platform (ICTRP) for research studies that had been included in eight systematic reviews. Four search approaches (highly sensitive, sensitive, precise, and highly precise) were performed using the basic and advanced interfaces in both resources.

Results:

On average, 84% of studies were not listed in either resource. The largest number of included studies was retrieved in ClinicalTrials.gov and ICTRP when a sensitive search approach was used in the basic interface. The use of the advanced interface maintained or improved sensitivity in 16 of 19 strategies for Clinicaltrials.gov and 8 of 18 for ICTRP. No single search approach was sensitive enough to identify all studies included in the 6 reviews.

Conclusions:

Trials registers cannot yet be relied upon as the sole means to locate trials for systematic reviews. Trials registers lag behind the major bibliographic databases in terms of their search interfaces.

Implications:

For systematic reviews, trials registers and major bibliographic databases should be searched. Trials registers should be searched using sensitive approaches, and both the registers consulted in this study should be searched.Clinical trials registers such as ClinicalTrials.gov and portals to trials registers such as the World Health Organization (WHO) International Clinical Trials Registry Platform (ICTRP) are increasingly used to identify ongoing or completed clinical trials. These resources offer important information on the methods and progress of trials likely to be of interest to a range of users, including researchers, clinicians, and patients. The extent to which these resources can be relied upon as a sole source of trials for inclusion in systematic reviews, including Cochrane systematic reviews (CSRs), is the subject of the research study reported here. This study also investigates the most efficient ways that librarians, information professionals, and other searchers can search these resources. Search efficiency was investigated by evaluating the overlap and unique yield of searches in the two resources and by testing four search approaches. The tested search approaches ranged from the very precise (single specific condition search term combined with a single specific intervention search term) to the very sensitive (at least two interventions terms).