The purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness of a direct instruction model as a means of enhancing secondary students' schema for expository text. Subjects were seventh- and tenth-grade students in regular reading and English classes in an suburban school district. Students were pre- and posttested on four measures: attitude toward expository text, independent reading comprehension and recall from expository text, organization of information from expository text in notetaking, and expository writing. A nested analysis of covariance procedure was used for data analysis to account for teacher effects and group non-equivalence. The study was conducted over a six-week period in the spring semester. A model of direct instruction in analysis of expository text structure was developed by the researcher, using sample text passages similar to those encountered by seventh- and tenth-grade students in content area reading. Treatment group teachers were provided with lesson plans and materials and were given instruction in the model; comparison group classes were given no particular instructional treatment other than that normally conducted during this period.

This research developed a framework describing students’ developing understanding of function. The research started with the problem: How might typical learning paths of secondary school students’ developing understanding of function be described and assessed? The following principles and research questions guided the development of the framework. Principle 1. The framework should be research-based. Principle 2. The framework should include key aspects of the function concept. Principle 3. The framework should be in a form that would enable teachers to assess and monitor students’ developing understanding of this concept. Principle 4. The framework should reflect students’ big ideas or growth points which describe students’ key cognitive strategies, knowledge and skills in working with function tasks. Principle 5. The framework should reflect typical learning trajectories or a general trend of the growth points in students’ developing understanding of function. The following questions guided the development of the framework of growth points: 1. What are the growth points in students’ developing understanding of function? 2. What information on students’ understanding of function is revealed in the course of developing the framework of growth points that would be potentially useful for teachers? The framework considered four key domains of the function concept: Graphs, Equations, Linking Representations and Equivalent Functions. Students’ understanding of function in each of these domains was described in terms of growth points. Growth points are descriptions of students’ “big ideas”. The description of each growth point highlights students’ developing conceptual understanding rather than merely procedural understanding of a mathematical concept. For example, growth points in students’ understanding of function under Equations were: 1) interpretations based on individual points; 2) interpretations based on holistic analysis of relationships; 3) interpretations based on local properties; and, 4) manipulations and transformations of functions (in equation form) as objects. he growth points in each domain are more or less ordered according to the likelihood that these “big ideas” would emerge. o identify and describe these growth points, Year 8, 9 and 10 students in Australia and the Philippines were given tasks involving function that would highlight thinking in terms of the process-object conception and the property-oriented conception of function. Students’ performance on these tasks and their strategies served as bases for the identification and description of the growth points. he research approach was interpretive and exploratory during the initial stages of analysis. The research then moved to a quantitative approach to identify typical patterns across the growth points, before returning to an interpretive phase in refining the growth points in the light of these data. The main data were collected from students in the Philippines largely through two written tests. Interviews with a sample of students also provided insights into students’ strategies and interpretations of tasks. he research outputs, the research-based framework and the assessment tasks, have the potential to provide teachers with a structure through which they can assess and develop students’ growth in the understanding of function, and their own understanding of the function concept.

This study is an investigation of the relationship between assessment and learning in education, and specifically, in the context of Australian secondary students studying English. The purpose of this research is to contribute to change in the way assessment of learning is conducted in view of the shift of educational values from content based towards a more goal-orientated process. Therefore, we begin this study with the premise that educational values should not only inform assessment in terms of outcomes and accountability as specified in national guidelines. They should also support a pedagogic process which helps to develop in students a heightened sense of the value of their own contributions to the community, academic and otherwise. The intellectual context of this study begins with an overview of most prominent educational theories. We illustrate John Dewey’s view that education should not only prepare one for life, but should also be an integral part of life itself. Dewey insisted that education was based in experience and that educational institutions should therefore honour and build on students� experiences. Piaget believed that children are quite sophisticated, active thinkers and theorists. Vygotsky saw all learning, knowledge, and experience had a social basis. Together these three theorists emphasize the active role of students as individuals (Dewey and Piaget) or a group (Vygotsky). Further, as society’s values shift from the Industrial Age to an Information Age, there is a growing expectation for individuals to be active and informed citizens, with the ability to exercise judgment and the capacity to make sense of their world. In response to these issues, we conclude that the teaching and assessment processes must support these kinds of requirements. We examine literature related to learning theories and assessment with the objective of ascertaining and illustrating aspects which they share and which, in our view, hamper the development of learning environments enabling exploratory and critical learning. We argue that when assessment criteria predetermine the learning outcomes, this results in teaching models where students’ learning needs are also predetermined. This process alienates students from their sociocultural context which shapes them and from which they derive their identify and the sense of their own value. Consequently, students become an object of pedagogic tools, rather than rightful participants in the lives of their various communities. Against the background of these reflections, we set out in this study to investigate how learning and assessment can be linked together. To this end, we develop the concept of an Exploratory Learning Environment. In order to articulate the framework of such an environment, we draw on a number of principals generally associated with humanist/constructivist/postmodern approaches to learning and assessment. In the course of this work we argue that students’ ways of knowing, and how they learn, cannot be divorced from their individual, and yet socially (interactively) constructed (negotiated), cultural experiences (terms of reference). The philosophy of the Exploratory Learning Environment can be described as promoting engagement and construction, thus supporting learning through experience, inquiry,experimentation and critical reflection. Consequently, in the Exploratory Learning Environment we seek to integrate pedagogic task construction and students’ expectations. To this end, we concentrate our research on strategies, or tools, enhancing students’ critical forms of engagement in their community. We aim for the academic knowledge, which they construct as a result, not to serve arbitrarily constructed performance indicators, but the students themselves and the community which they engage. Regarding assessment, our objective is to ascertain the diversity of conflict-generating concerns which students take into account in order to motivate the kinds of socially responsible solutions that they create and, as a result, the kinds of relationships which they want to establish. This approach to assessment allows us to focus students’ learning on developing critical thinking skills whose validation comes from students’ own evaluation, rather than from an abstract source of authority. This arrangement of creating learning environments rich in tools enhancing students’ critical forms of engagement we carry out using two classes of Year 10 and one class of Year 8 students in two secondary schools. Results from the study demonstrate significant advantages that can be gained when assessment is not limited to the measure of a ‘product’, but is based in pedagogy enabling critical negotiation. For example, students developed a sense of ownership of their learning task, felt motivated to explore conflicting issues, and, interestingly, valued the assessment process and looked forward to learning about the quality of their performance. In summary, the theoretical reflections conducted in this study and the experiment conducted within the Exploratory Learning Environment model, together, provide valuable and reliable evidence supporting the need for a critical evaluation of the currently existing relationship between teaching and assessment. Further, this thesis offers examples of solutions in which this link can be fostered. It demonstrates that, when students are empowered to learn by critically linking academic and other forms of knowledge residing in their community, the assessment process become a meaningful tool to them and they become involved in their assessment. At the same time, teachers learn to reduce the grip they hold on the learning and assessment processes. They do so by adopting the role of a facilitator of the students’ negotiation process. This is very different from the traditional teaching practices where the learning process is restricted, rather than enhanced, by assessment.

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The Field Study reports on the research and development of a Health Assessment Program (HAP) for secondary school students over a period of three years in the ACT. The 'original' HAP is described, and its early implementation methods discussed. Changes are proposed and trialled, and further refinements made, then trialled again. Through this process a new HAP is developed. The 'Research and Development Cycle' (Borg and Gall 1983) provides the theoretical framework for the planning of the field study. (See 1.4). The 'new' HAP exhibits the characteristics of an 'education' program. The physical components have been developed to enable them to be administered by the teachers who are responsible for the organisation of the HAP in their school, and health professionals are only used for those components which require confidential counselling. This is in contrast to the 'original' HAP which was organised and conducted by health professionals. The process by which the changes took place has determined the quality of the new HAP. The developments have been based on the views of the teachers who used the HAP, the students who were tested, and the health professionals who participated. The literature has also been used to provide the direction for, and nature of, the changes. This process has ensured a program which is highly suitable for use in the school environment. It is not envisaged that the HAP has reached its final stage of development. Each school who uses the program is encouraged to modify and adapt it to suit the needs of their own teachers and students.

Thesis (M.Ed.)--University of Hong Kong, 1992. / Includes bibliographical references (leaf 135-139). Also available in print.

Thesis (M.Ed.)--University of Hong Kong, 1980. / Includes bibliographical refererence (leaf 83-87) Also available in print.

Thesis (M.Ed.)--University of Hong Kong, 1980. / Includes bibliographical references (leaf 70-74). Also available in print.

Thesis (M.Ed.)--University of Hong Kong, 1989. / Includes bibliographical references (leaf 90-94). Also available in print.

Thesis (M.Ed.)--University of Hong Kong, 1983. / Includes bibliographical references (leaf 85-86). Also available in print.