This paper describes a national statistics-oriented project-based learning activity, which has been delivered annually for five years in Australia and the outcomes of a particular collaboration of this initiative with the discipline of environmental sustainability. The national initiative engages primary- and secondary-school students from varied…

We examined effects on child development of a group-based parenting support program ("Educación Inicial" - EI) when combined with Mexico's conditional cash transfer (CCT) program ("Prospera," originally 'Oportunidades" and "Progresa"). This cluster-randomized trial included 204 communities (n = 1,113 children in…

This paper investigates the validity of a national, standards-based teacher evaluation programme by examining the relationship between teachers' evaluation results and their students' learning progress. We used census achievement data that assessed the same cohort of students at the end of 8th and 10th grade. We applied multilevel modelling and…

Teachers are now experiencing the age of quantitative test-driven assessment, in which there is little weight accorded to teacher-based judgement about student progress. In the Australian context, the NAPLaN test has become a driving force in school and teacher accountability. The language of NAPLaN is one of bands and numerical scores and…

This paper uses data from the National Pupil Database to investigate the differences in "performance" across the range of science courses available following the 2006 Key Stage 4 (KS4) science reforms in England. This is a value-added exploration (from Key Stage 3 [KS3] to KS4) aimed not at the student or the school level, but rather at…

This study investigated the attitudes of primary school students towards computer based testing and assessment in terms of different variables. The sample for this research is primary school students attending a computer based testing and assessment application via CITO-OIS. The "Scale on Attitudes towards Computer Based Testing and…

A major variable by which national educational systems may be compared is their structural differentiation, defined (1) as a process, referring to the multiplication of one structural element into two or more structurally distinct elements; and (2) as a state, referring to the number of structurally distinct elements which exist in a system at a…

This document contains 95 papers and summaries of 5 poster sessions from an Australian conference on putting vocational education and training (VET) research to work. The following are among the areas covered in the papers: factors affecting VET graduates' employability over time; technical and further education (TAFE) institutes as models of…