Group items tagged

"ACARA is the independent authority responsible for the development of a national curriculum, a national assessment program and a national data collection and reporting program that supports 21st century learning for all Australian students.

Australian group responsible for national curriculum and assessment program.

"Welcome to the Assessment for Learning website. This site has been developed by Curriculum Corporation on behalf of the education departments of the States, Territories and Commonwealth of Australia." "There are 32 assessment tasks, covering the learning areas of English, Science, Studies of Society and Environment and Health and Physical Education, Languages Other Than English, Technology, The Arts and Mathematics - or their State and Territory equivalents.

"NOVA takes you simply, quickly and directly to resources that will inform your own strategic thinking on innovation in schools. for articles in the current issue addressing: assessment; case studies; curriculum; leadership; pedagogy; research; and thought leaders. NOVA focuses on leadership, curriculum, assessment, pedagogy and research, as well as bringing you thought leaders and case studies that address innovation." "

Welcome to the Assessment for Learning website. This site has been developed by Curriculum Corporation on behalf of the education departments of the States, Territories and Commonwealth of Australia.

Abstract How we go about assessing HE students has such a significant impact on student learning that we need to rethink our whole curriculum design process to foreground assessment.

THE NSW state government has ruled out implementing the new national curriculum next year, as scheduled under the federal government's timeline.

Alex Quigley unpacks the question of assessment and what is needed in order to properly support learning. Curriculum design, target setting, testing, work scrutiny, moderation, feedback, marking - we need to look again at all of these and ask whether they are actually aiding learning

Reading Australia has been developed by the Copyright Agency and aims to make significant Australian literary works more readily available for teaching in schools and universities. These works are supplemented with online teacher resources and essays by popular authors about the enduring relevance of the works. There is a list of titles (download as a PDF). These titles have been selected by the Australian Society of Authors' (ASA) Council. They were asked to select works they thought students and others should encounter, to give a view of Australia's rich cultural identity: works that would tell Australia's history and also how we are currently developing as a nation. The ASA Council are adamant that this list should be merely the beginning, and it should be built upon with other works that have already been published, as well as the great new works that continue to be published in Australia. There is a wide range of teacher resources available (PDF) for Primary and Secondary school teachers and all of these teacher resources include classroom activities, assessments and links to the Australian Curriculum. In addition, many of the Secondary resources include an introductory essay on the text written by high profile writers. The Primary level resources have been commissioned by the Primary English Teaching Association of Australia and the Australian Literacy Educators' Association, and the resources for Secondary level have been jointly commissioned by the Australian Association for the Teaching of English and the English Teachers Association NSW."

Reading Australia has been developed by the Copyright Agency and aims to make significant Australian literary works more readily available for teaching in schools and universities. These works are supplemented with online teacher resources and essays by popular authors about the enduring relevance of the works. There is a list of titles (download as a PDF). These titles have been selected by the Australian Society of Authors' (ASA) Council. They were asked to select works they thought students and others should encounter, to give a view of Australia's rich cultural identity: works that would tell Australia's history and also how we are currently developing as a nation. The ASA Council are adamant that this list should be merely the beginning, and it should be built upon with other works that have already been published, as well as the great new works that continue to be published in Australia. There is a wide range of teacher resources available (PDF) for Primary and Secondary school teachers and all of these teacher resources include classroom activities, assessments and links to the Australian Curriculum. In addition, many of the Secondary resources include an introductory essay on the text written by high profile writers. The Primary level resources have been commissioned by the Primary English Teaching Association of Australia and the Australian Literacy Educators' Association, and the resources for Secondary level have been jointly commissioned by the Australian Association for the Teaching of English and the English Teachers Association NSW."

NAPLAN-style testing and reporting has failed in the United States by narrowing the curriculum and corrupting education standards, says a chief education adviser to the US President, Barack Obama. .. The US tests have been criticised for narrowing the curriculum to reading and maths and multiple-choice formats.

key points (see also my bookmark to the BLC '07 keynote by Professor McFarlane) - technology is not helping learning (1:30) - american high schools are counterproductive to success in knowledge society (Bill Gates) (2:30) - have a model where kids produce their own digital representation of how they see the world (4:00) - make learning deeper rather than try to cover a lot of content but shallow learning (5:00) - one suggestion is teaching people to be able to recognise an evidence-based argument and not be susceptible to incorrect information (6:00) - model for assessment based on this sort of change to curriculum (7:30) - meaningful coursework - mainly in school - not allowing homework to restrict their self learning - treat school like work in a way with emphasis on quality not quantity (10:00) - need to connect with parents who see school as different than their schooling and unsure about its benefits (11:00) - access to technology (12:00) - benefit based on having the access first bit also that their environment but also their culture at home helps them benefit - top 15% (from BLC keynote) are getting most benefit from access and their culture - but these normally high achievers can't see school as relevant to them based on what they experience at home and are failing at school (13:30) - community knowledge and learning capacity building in technology (14:00) - "digital challenge" program in Bristol (14:40) - community mentors that learn something then teach to others in the community - giving more people access and that means they can have choices on what they can do

Critical thinking is a difficult concept to define in clear, objective terms. This can make it a challenging objective for teachers to implement and assess. The aim of this resource is to provide teachers with some tools to help clarify and communicate what critical thinking is and how it might be implemented as a teaching method.  This resource includes materials that can help teachers to engage their classes in critical thinking. The materials have been written with year 9 and year 10 students in mind, yet can easily be differentiated for students in years 8 and 11. The critical thinking introduction addresses what critical thinking is, where is applies in the curriculum and how to teach it. The teachers guide provides an overview of this resource in relation to the accompanying PowerPoint presentation.

Barry McGaw, the chairman of the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority, the agency responsible for the site, said it could spark debate about how resources were divided between the education bureaucracy and schools. ''It's not only going to be parents who might be surprised, some principals of government schools might be surprised about how much is being spent on their behalf centrally

There are terms within education that we use with reckless abandon and as a result cause great levels of confusion. Understanding is one such word and its usage and our 'understanding' of it can have a significant effect on the learning we plan, deliver and assess. With multiple definitions and its broad usage in curriculum documents, philosophies of teaching and learning and as an indicator of the quality or depth of student learning it is a word we should better understand. 

Post by Ewan McIntosh. Finding questions that Google can't answer. Article looking at the questions we ask and the problem-solving sbilities we are teaching students

I've just downloaded their first app for Australian early learners curriculum-123 Sheep, I'll try it with my 4 year old.

teachers are being deskilled, unceremoniously removed from the process of school governance, largely reduced to technicians or subordinated to the authority of security guards. Underlying these transformations are a number of forces eager to privatize schools, substitute vocational training for education and reduce teaching and learning to reductive modes of testing and evaluation.

A profile of almost 10,000 Australian school to help search for schools compare statistically similar schools, view school-level NAPLAN results, identify schools that are doing well and share successful strategies. This service is designed to support acce

Aim of this website is to quickly locate statistical and contextual information about schools and compare them with statistically similar schools across Australia.