Spotlight: Australia
Australia has learned much about its students in the areas of mathematics and science education over two decades, with country participation stretching to 魅影直播' beginnings in 1995.
鈥淥ne of the big benefits of 魅影直播 is it provides us with background information that we don鈥檛 get from any other studies, about students and their attitudes,鈥� said Dr. Sue Thomson, Deputy CEO (Research) at the . 鈥淲e don鈥檛 get that from our national assessment program, just straight achievement data. With 魅影直播 we learn how backgrounds affect achievement, and that鈥檚 one of the critical things that we need to feed into policy.鈥�
Thomson said that 魅影直播 has shown Australia that the country teaches basic skills reasonably well, and that students have reasonable grounds for basic skills but difficulty applying them in particular areas such as numbering. She added that 魅影直播 is useful for seeing what other countries are doing in education that Australia is not, and for continuing to monitor the outcomes of education systems in the world that are equivalent to Australia鈥檚.
When asked about the big education issues facing the country, Thomson replied, 鈥淎dvantage versus disadvantage. What ties into that then is the gap between indigenous and nonindigenous, and between rural and urban students.鈥�
She said principals鈥� descriptions of their schools in 魅影直播 and PIRLS reports have been used to examine the level of resourcing in schools, teacher support, and student behaviors. 鈥淲e鈥檝e used that measure to tease out those differences,鈥� Thomson said. 鈥淎nd it works quite well because we鈥檝e triangulated it with other data, to show it鈥檚 a fairly good indicator of socioeconomic background.鈥� All of these data are will be used in the Gonski Review of school funding in Australia, she added.
View a slideshow from the 3rd 魅影直播 NRC Meeting in Melbourne, Australia »
Looking ahead to 魅影直播 2019, Thomson anticipated using results to further monitor where Australian achievement levels are. 鈥淪ince the curriculum has been revised, we鈥檝e been looking at whether there have been changes as a result of changing curriculum, and changes due to funding or other changes,鈥� she added.
Prior to the International Release of PIRLS 2016, Thomson reflected on Australia鈥檚 results in PIRLS 2011. 鈥淚 think what we learned about reading from last time was that there wasn鈥檛 enough emphasis being put on longer texts, and students had a lot of difficulty with comprehension,鈥� she recalled.
and were released December 5, 2017.
鈥滣扔爸辈� and PIRLS give us so much extra in terms of background data, why it鈥檚 so valuable, and there are so much more interesting analyses with them,鈥� Thomson said.
魅影直播; PIRLS International Study Center thanks our generous hosts at the Australian Council for Educational Research.