Abstract
In the first article for this issue of the Australian Journal of Education, Carly Steele, Graeme Gower, and Tetiana Bogachenko report on the creation and enactment of culturally responsive assessments for a group of First Nations students undertaking a Bachelor of Primary Education degree to become teachers as part of an On Country Teacher Education (OCTE) program. As part of the evaluation of the OCTE program, bi-annual interviews were conducted with the students (n = 25), and annual interviews conducted with the lecturers (n = 15), and principals (n = 14) of the schools where the students were employed as Aboriginal and Islander Education Officers (AIEOs).
Reflexive thematic analysis was used with transcriptions of these interviews and resulted in identification of two main ways in which lecturers were perceived as enacting and creating culturally responsive assessments for the students: through their approaches to assessment (i.e. how culturally responsive assessment can be enacted) and through their assessment design (i.e. how culturally responsive assessment can be created).
The authors suggest that while the changes to practices were seen as beneficial for the First Nations students involved, the changes were ‘responsive’ rather than ‘proactive’ and recommend that university educators shift to a proactive stance and consider the validity of student learning outcomes and assessment design from the beginning. Assessment practices, they point out, must keep pace with culturally responsive pedagogical practices to improve assessment validity for First Nations students and to maintain constructive alignment between learning, teaching, and assessment.
The second article in this issue examines reporting practices related to students with disability in the Australian national assessments of literacy and numeracy (NAPLAN). The National Assessment Program for Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) is intended to assess all Australian students in Years 3, 5, 7, and 9. Kathryn Richardson and Greta Rollo explored the extent to which equity and inclusion are achieved for students with disability through NAPLAN reporting. They conducted a document analysis of publicly accessible NAPLAN reports, technical reports, handbooks, and protocols (dating back to 2008) to evaluate how this cohort is represented in NAPLAN reports. They found a conspicuous absence of reporting about students with disability in all NAPLAN documents, with no performance or participation information available for this group of students, despite assertions that students with disability are encouraged to participate in NAPLAN and various adjustments for the assessment outlined in support documentation. The authors note the importance placed on NAPLAN results for monitoring learning outcomes for other groups of students who may considered ‘at risk’, like students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, 1 and pose the question as to why this information is not made available about students living with disability. Acknowledging the challenges in establishing the size of the cohort of students living with disability, with different proportions reported by different sources, they suggest that improved reporting about this group of students and their achievement would enable educational progress to be tracked, and the efficacy of educational initiatives that target them to be monitored.
The third article reports on a study that investigated relationships between students’ self-perceptions, behaviours, and reading achievement. Following 127 primary schools students (Years 3 and 4) over 2 years, Ian Hay and Yvonne Stevenson used measures of students’ self-concept in reading, their effort in reading and English subjects, and their use of self-handicapping strategies (e.g. putting off doing homework until the last moment so they can attribute poor performance to limited time), along with their teachers’ reports of their attentive, sociable, and settled behaviours in class, to investigate influences on reading achievement at two time points. Results from the first regression model indicated that attentive behaviours in class, low levels of self-handicapping, and reading self-concept were the main influences on reading achievement. The second model used reading achievement scores 2 years later (when students were in Years 5 and 6) as the dependent variable and including past achievement as an independent variable. Results from this model found that students’ self-handicapping and their past reading achievement were significant influences on their reading achievement, while the measures of effort and self-concept and class behaviours taken 2 years earlier had no significant influence on their current reading achievement. The authors state that the relationship between past and current measures of reading achievement highlight the importance of continued attention to and instruction in reading comprehension over the primary years using evidence-based interventions and strategies. The continued influence of self-handicapping strategies on reading achievement is an intriguing finding and warrants further investigation, particularly given the age of the students in this study.
Our final article, by Linda Gilmore, Karen Sullivan, and Brenda Hughes reports on a component of a broader study of teaching practices among Australian teachers that focused on teachers using physical activities during class time. Over 70% of the teachers in the study (162 of 222 teachers) indicated that they used physical activities during their classes and most provided examples of the activities they included. These activities were classified by the authors into three categories – movement breaks, activities accompanied by academic content, and regular organised activities. Teachers were also asked to provide reasons for including physical activities in classes, with responses highlighting the perceived benefits for students’ attention, concentration, behaviour, and engagement in the classroom. However, none of the respondents reported attempting to measure the effectiveness of these breaks on their students’ outcomes or mentioned any research supporting the use of the different physical activities they mentioned. The authors note this with concern, particularly in cases where teachers are using commercially available programs that may not be evidence-based or where teachers’ reasons for undertaking certain activities appeared to be based on misconceptions of relationships between physical activity and cognitive development. They conclude that teachers need greater support to access and understand high quality research about physical activity and learning, as well as guidance for translating this research into effective teaching practice.
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