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Teachers gather for assessment summit

December 13, 2005

Teachers at an assessment summitThe National Centre of Science, Information and Communication Technology, and Mathematics Education for Rural and Regional Australia (SiMMER) hosted 36 NSW public school teachers at a two-day summit at UNE on December 5 and 6.

The summit brought together teachers from six schools from the North Coast, Central Coast and Hunter Valley areas of NSW participating in a three-year longitudinal study investigating the impact of developmentally based quality assessment practices on english, mathematics and science teaching.

Project Officer Ms Terry Wright said that the summit was the culmination of the first year of the project.

“The study is a three-year project and this summit gave us the opportunity to take stock and look back on the first year,” Ms Wright said.

“It was also an opportunity for teachers to demonstrate their achievements, air concerns or problems, and take part in professional discourse with other teachers participating in the same project.”

Leading up to the summit, the research team of Professor John Pegg, Dr David Baxter, Dr Rosemary Callingham, Dr Debra Panizzon and Project Officer Terry Wright had visited all six schools on a number of occasions. These visits were for the purpose of collecting baseline data for the project and offering on-going support for the participants. There were also three professional development days where the teachers came together, two schools at a time, to widen their knowledge of the Structure of the Observed Learning Outcome (SOLO) assessment model, and its implications for students in english, mathematics and science classes.

The summit was broken up into subject teams (english, science, and mathematics) with presentations made by teachers from each school to help to identify problems that might have been common.

The summit also contained sessions on exploring ways to develop better assessment tasks, designing teaching strategies to guide students to higher levels in the SOLO assessment model, and exploring working memory and information processing models.

Also in attendance at the summit were officers of the NSW Department of Education and Training. Chief Educational Officer (CEO) for School Based Assessment K-12 Peter Lorking and CEO for Science K-12 Glen Sawle, were there for observational purposes and spoke informally on topics of their expertise.

“Peter Lorking was able to bring teachers up to date with developments in the new school reports,” Ms Wright said.

“And Glen Sawle spoke to the science team, providing background to the National Statements of Learning for Science.”

The final session of the summit was used to plan the next stage of the project, in 2006.

While in Armidale, the project participants were accommodated in Mary White College, and had an official dinner at Booloominbah Restaurant.

For more information contact Terry Wright on (02) 6773 4289 or Leon Braun (UNE Public Relations) on (02) 6773 3771. A photo is available to accompany this story.

Posted by Ben Glover at December 13, 2005 02:27 PM