Dr. Gabrielle Matters

Gambling and young people in Australia

Nola Purdie et al. — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 16:30:52 PST

This study was undertaken by the Australian Council for Educational Research Ltd (ACER) and presents a number of findings related to the gambling behaviour of young people in Australia.

Three surveys were developed and administered between August 2009 and May 2010. They included on-line; pencil and paper; and computer assisted telephone interviews (CATI). The CATI interviews were administered to young people in all Australian States and Territories.

The study found that overall 77% of young people have participated in a gambling activity at least once within the 12 month period preceding the study. Gambling frequency as reported by young people is not particularly high as very few young people reported that they participated in gambling activities on a daily or even weekly basis.

The study used the DSM-IV-MR-J (Fisher 2000) (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual Fourth Edition Multiple response - adapted for juveniles) to classify young people according to gambling status. Overall 23% of young people did not gamble during the reporting period. Of the 77% who did gamble, 56% were classified as social gamblers, 16% classified as at-risk while 5% were classified as problem gamblers. According to gender, males were more likely to be problem gamblers and at-risk gamblers than females. Indigenous young people were 6.4 times more likely to be problem gamblers than their non-Indigenous counterparts.

The most common gambling activity across the sample (n=5,972) was the purchase of instant-prize tickets/scratch cards followed by lottery tickets and playing card games at home or in the homes of friends or relatives.

The study has its limitations which included school resistance to participate in the study making it difficult to recruit from schools and difficulties in recruiting the non-school sample due to the expansion of mobile only households at a cost to the landline households.

Overall the study presents a number of findings related to the gambling behaviour of young people in Australia and pays particular attention to those young people who can be classified as problem gamblers.

New Zealand and Queensland teachers' conceptions of curriculum : potential jurisdictional effects of curriculum policy and implementation

Gavin T. Brown et al. — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 21:39:20 PST

The conceptions teachers have about curriculum are part of teachers' implicit beliefs about education. The study investigated the structure of teachers’ conceptions and the impact of curriculum policy on those conceptions. Two survey studies in New Zealand and Queensland used items from the Curriculum Orientation Inventory (COI). Confirmatory factor analysis provided robust modelling of teachers’ conceptions of curriculum. Multigroup analysis showed the model was statistically invariant between Queensland primary and secondary teachers. The teachers in both jurisdictions and in both sectors gave most agreement to the Academic-Humanistic conception and least agreement to the Social Reconstruction conception. The technological orientation elicited divergent opinions between New Zealand and Queensland teachers. The structure of teachers conceptions appeared to be predominantly independent rather than pluralistic and aligned with the priorities of their own employment context.

New Zealand and Queensland teachers' conceptions of learning : transforming more than reproducing

Gavin T. Brown et al. — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 19:03:36 PDT

Two major conceptions of learning exist: reproducing new material and transforming material to make meaning. Teachers'understandings of what learning is probably influence their teaching practices and student academic performance. To validate a short scale derived from Tait, Entwistle, & McCune's ASSIST inventory and to determine and compare the strength of agreement New Zealand and Queensland primary and secondary teachers had for both conceptions. Two survey studies with three populations provided valid data: 235 NZ Primary teachers in 2001, and 784 Primary and 614 Secondary Queensland teachers in 2003. A survey of 81 NZ secondary teachers in 2000 did not have enough participants to generate stable estimates. Five items defining learning were administered using a six point, positively-packed agreement rating scale. Data were analysed with MMLE confirmatory factor analysis with oblimin rotation. Multiple models were compared and results from the best fitting model (CFI and TLI>.90; RMSEA<.08) for all three samples are reported. Cohen's d effect size was used to determine significance of differences in conceptions mean scores. Psychometric properties of the two scales were good. Conceptions of learning were structured as two inter-correlated factors related to transforming and reproducing conceptions of learning. All samples agreed more with the transforming than the reproducing conception of learning; however, there were small group differences in mean scores. The response scale and items generated sufficient variation to detect differences in teachers' attitudes towards transforming and reproducing conceptions of learning.

Effective practice in assessment

Gabrielle Matters — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 18:59:13 PDT

Practising effective assessment means that educators need to be fully equipped and ready for action to deliver the goods. What are the goods in this case? For the author the answer is the very best evidence of the nature and quality of student learning so that teachers can get information to feed a higher goal. That higher goal is more and better learning for more and more students. What are the characteristics of a system that is fully equipped and ready for action? For the author the answer is quite simple: first and foremost, teachers possessing high-level assessment skills, contributing to student learning and effectively communicating the results of that learning. This article examines some of the principles that underpin effective assessment practice.

The relationship between assessment and curriculum in improving teaching and learning

Gabrielle Matters — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 18:57:17 PDT

The New Basics currently being trialed in Queensland schools is an integrated framework for curriculum, pedagogy and assessment. It defines essential areas of learning, appropriate and effective approaches to teaching, affiliated modes of assessment and standards and assurances about student development at key points of schooling. The New Basics curriculum organisers are clusters of practices that are essential for survival in the worlds that students have to deal with. The framework incorporates Productive Pedagogies, which draw on the results of a recent longitudinal study conducted in Queensland state schools. The framework also includes Rich Tasks, which allow students to display their understandings, knowledges and skills through performance on transdisciplinary activities that have an obvious connection to the wide world. This paper elaborates these three elements, explores their interaction, and describes progress in trial schools towards the goal of improving teaching and learning.

The omit phenomenon in high-stakes achievement testing using an short- response format

Gabrielle Matters — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 18:53:15 PDT

To questions about the who, what and why of item omission on tests in short-response format, very few answers have been provided from a combination of the discipline areas of psychology and educational measurement. In this research study, an empirical approach is taken subsequent to the proposal of a theoretical model. It posits that the three clusters constituting 'presage' have effects, some direct, some indirect, some positive, some negative, on the 'product' - short-response omit rate - and also influence the hidden (and therefore unable-to-be-measured) 'process' - the interaction between item and person. Data were obtained on the 1997 QCS Test population (N = 29 273). A 120-item questionnaire was administered to a random sample of 1908 students, interviews were conducted with selected students, and information was extracted from the test construction matrix. The results are analysed in terms of background and psychological characteristics of the candidate and features of the testing process. It is concluded that the predeterminants of the propensity to omit short-response items include sex of candidate, type of school attended, test-irrelevant thinking, academic self- concept, test-taking strategies, and self-imposed difficulty. One of the subsidiary findings is concerned with attitudes to high- stakes testing, another with the consequences of the contextualisation of test items for a certain type of student.

Are Australian boys underachieving? An analysis using a validity–reliability framework based on the work of Lee Cronbach and Pamela Moss

Gabrielle Matters et al. — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 18:31:55 PDT

Recently, in Australia, many newspaper headlines have announced that girls are

outperforming boys academically. Educational journals have published articles on

the topic and conference speakers have referred to it.

This paper examines the achievement of boys in modern classrooms. By referring

to Cronbach’s perspectives on validity arguments (1988), especially the political

and operationist perspectives, and Moss’s notions of reliability warrants (1994),

especially as they relate to inconsistency and critical community, we use a

previously promulgated ‘validity–reliability’ framework to analyse the academic

achievement of boys. In the process, we refer to the relative achievements of girls

and boys in the common curriculum and we explore the thesis that the

feminisation of education contributes to apparent shifts of balance in achievement

between the sexes.

[ISBN: 0 7242 7594 0]

New basic pedagogies that promote mulitliteracies

Susan Grieshaber et al. — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 18:25:51 PDT

This work-in-progress paper focuses on pedagogical approaches within two multi-age New Basics classrooms (Years 1, 2 and 3) in two state schools in Queensland, and explores how these pedagogies encourage children to manipulate ideas and information. It depicts classroom and technology environments that enable students to solve problems and come to new meanings and understandings. Additionally, it raises issues for consideration such as the uncertainty of achieving instructional outcomes in classroom technologies environments. While teachers create for children activities or technologies environments that are aimed at achieving deeper understanding and enhancing higher order thinking, there can be no certainty that these cognitive outcomes will always be achieved. However, when teachers provide opportunities for children to investigate with technologies to research assigned topics, there is sharing of ideas that are 'unscripted' and evidence that these ideas are sustained and applied, thereby providing experience with tasks requiring higher order thinking and promoting the use of multi literacies. This paper traces ways that teachers and children in two New Basics classrooms use technologies to scaffold learning experiences that enable young children to engage in the construction of knowledge through substantive conversations about a range of topics. Video excerpts show children using simple and more sophisticated technical skills, including: exploring a range of programs, such as PowerPoint, HyperStudio, Appleworks, as well as the Internet to obtain information; making choices, both random and considered, by clicking a range of options within different programs; problem solving, with the capacity to describe what they are doing; using technical language and exploring the meaning of terms within programs (e.g., stack, new card, basic); collaborative working arrangements that enable substantive conversations between children as they discuss and share knowledge and information and create visual and verbal images.

Meeting the challenges of short response items in the Queensland Core Skills Test : a report on the 1991 pilot study

Gabrielle Matters — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 18:09:41 PDT

The Board of Senior Secondary School Studies (BSSSS) is developing the Queensland

Core Skills (QCS) Test, which will be administered to Queensland Year 12 students for

the first time in September 1992. One paper of the QCS Test will consist of Short

Response Items (SRIs).

The SRI format is new to Queensland. SRIs present significant challenges to test

constructors in their design, selection, presentation and marking. In 1991, following the

initial developmental stages, the Board conducted a pilot study involving a 30-item

paper, 4500 students, 42 schools and 55 markers.

This report documents that pilot study. It describes the Board's experiences in

implementing the Government's decision to include SRIs in the QCS Test, by relating

one cycle of the design process in action - creating and refining items, selecting and

sequencing items and presenting them as a testpaper, then administering and marking

that test.

It records what happened at each stage, what was learned along the way, what issues

emerged, and what changes in procedure are planned.

This report does not debate issues already discussed in the Vivian Report (1990), in the

community, and in earlier reports on tertiary entrance such as the Pitman Report (1987).

No answers are supplied to the questions: 'Why have a core skills test?'; 'Why have

short answer questions?' Nor are the relative merits of the two other modes of

assessment - extended writing and multiple-choice - documented here.

The results of the pilot study suggest ways in which the challenges presented by SRIs

can be met in the first year of administering the test, and that SRIs provide worthwhile

information about student achievement not accessible through the other modes.

[ISBN: 072425094]

The Queensland Core Skills Test : implications for the mathematical sciences

Gabrielle Matters et al. — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 18:06:24 PDT

The focus of the Queensland Core Skills (QCS) Test is on the assessment of individual and group student performance on 49 common curriculum elements; that is, the cognitive skills that are the threads of the senior curriculum. The first part of this paper provides a general introduction to the QCS Test: its purposes, its features, what it tests and the process by which it is designed. A highly desirable property of the QCS Test is that students of any given subject are not necessarily advantaged or disadvantaged in regard to performance on any particular item. On the other hand, mathematics is one of the few subjects that students can be assumed to have studied to Year 10. The second part of this paper focuses on the ways in which test construction and implementation ensure that the QCS Test is grounded in the senior school curriculum while fostering subject-independent measurement of student performance. [ISBN: 072426034X]

Standards and assessment at Year 12 – commonality and assessment in English nationally

Gabrielle Matters — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 17:16:52 PDT

Across the curriculum landscape in Australia – a dog’s breakfast?

Gabrielle Matters — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 17:15:42 PDT

Standards-based assessment, statistical and social moderation, and issues of combining, scaling and ranking

Gabrielle Matters — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 17:14:52 PDT

Statistical moderation and social moderation around Australia

Gabrielle Matters — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 17:12:26 PDT

Realising and releasing potential: Externally moderated school-based assessment 40 years on

Claire Wyatt-Smith et al. — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 17:11:37 PDT

What is new in Assessment Land?

Gabrielle Matters — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 17:09:52 PDT

The Pressure for Change: The Queensland Response

Gabrielle Matters — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 17:08:13 PDT

The Rich Task approach to curriculum, pedagogy and assessment – unpalatable research findings and beyond

Gabrielle Matters — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 17:07:16 PDT

Review of capital sub-committee scoring procedure

Gabrielle Matters et al. — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 16:45:37 PDT

Work commissioned by the Queensland Catholic Education Commission.

Year 12 curriculum content and achievement standards

Gabrielle Matters et al. — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 16:45:13 PDT

This study provides the first Australia-wide picture of what is expected of students taking five subjects—English (including Literature), Mathematics, Chemistry, Physics and Australian History—in the final years of secondary school. The study addresses three broad questions: What is currently taught in these five subjects across Australia? This question is addressed through an analysis of the content of senior school curricula in the five subjects in all Australian states and territories. The study documents similarities and differences in approaches and in the content (subject matter and skills/understandings) emphasised in state and territory curriculum documents. What is the 'essential' content (subject matter and skills/understandings) that all students should be acquiring through these subjects, regardless of the state or territory in which they live? This question is addressed by asking selected experts in the five subject areas to make judgments about existing and missing content in senior curricula. What standard of performance is expected of students in these subjects, and how do these expectations vary across states and territories? This question is addressed through an analysis of state and territory descriptions of the highest grade (eg, A; Band 6; Very High Achievement) awarded in each subject.