University students worldwide regularly encounter assessments in their courses and the results obtained are used to make important decisions about their movement from one year of study to the next. This makes students vital stakeholders in the assessment practices of institutions and illustrates how issues related to the topic of assessment and assessment practices are critical to students. Many authors and researchers advocate the idea that the perspectives of students’ themselves are important wherever questions of assessment arise. Furthermore, assessments take on various forms and are understood and therefore utilised in a particular manner depending on their context. This study thus aimed to describe assessments used at a specific South African university from the students’ perspective. Seventeen third year level Psychology students participated by completing a demographic questionnaire and taking part in one of four focus groups which were transcribed. The data were analysed using thematic content analysis. The research yielded results pertaining to many different aspects of assessment. Participants perceived the purposes of assessment in the same manner as described in the literature, namely to measure knowledge, ability to cope and institutional standards. They viewed each form of assessment (multiple choice tests, open-ended test and examinations, essay assignments and group work) as having a specific purpose and different advantages and disadvantages and indicated that they prepared for each type of assessment using different strategies, depending on the form. Participants understood assessments in terms of the types of task that each required them to complete but were more concerned about the conditions under which they were expected to complete them. The time constraint element in particular was viewed as detracting from performance rather than as part of the assessment task. Other individual and contextual factors were perceived as important but were often not accounted for or able to be accounted for in assessments. Participants appeared motivated to succeed by achieving high marks rather than by achieving the intended course outcomes and assessment purposes and time management was identified as an important aspect of coping. In general, the participants seemed to perceive assessment and the various forms thereof in a similar manner and in line with literature.

No Child Left Behind (NCLB; 2002) requires student assessment to be reported by school districts based on certain demographic variables. Research indicated that other variables may relate to student achievement. This study calculated the relationship between average school district scores and the demographic variables required by NCLB (ethnicity, gender, socio-economic status, special needs, migrant status and English language learners) as well as literature identified variables (source of district funding, pupil-to-teacher ratio, average teacher salary, per-pupil-expenditure, school district population size.) The subject area tests used for this study were Algebra I, Biology I, English II and United States History tests for all districts in the state of Mississippi. The study found that there was a relationship between ethnicity, and socio-economic status of students and the district?s average scores on the subject area tests, and the gender of students showed a very weak relationship. Source of funding and per-pupil-expenditure returned a significant relationship, and population size and teacher salary was significant, but weaker and more sporadic. Further research is suggested for some of the variables.

Thesis advisor: Audrey A. Friedman / Despite the inherent obstacles posed by increasingly diverse student populations, school leaders worldwide are under mounting pressure to raise student achievement. This study utilizes hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) to investigate the relationship between principal priorities and student achievement in reading literacy on the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) in sixty-four jurisdictions worldwide. Disaggregating the sixty-four systems into three performance levels, the research aims to equip principals across the global landscape with insights into current performance patterns of diverse learners and the leadership behaviors that associate with student achievement. The diverse groups of interest include boys, immigrants, language learners, socio-economically disadvantaged students, and rural pupils. Three conditions of effective leadership organize the priorities of investigation: defining a mission, managing instruction, and developing a climate (Hallinger and Murphy, 1985). The results reveal that across performance levels, diverse learners are underachieving but specific subgroups are faring better than others in some jurisdictions. Commonalities emerge from these jurisdictions and set a roadmap for interpreting the achievement of diverse learners worldwide. The leadership priorities that most frequently associate with student achievement when controlling for background factors vary across systems and across performance levels. The priorities under `defining the school mission' are most frequently statistically significantly associated to student achievement in promising systems and the priorities under `managing the instructional programming' and `developing school climate' are most frequent among high- performers. Overall, however, the associations are weak and ultimately open the possibility of a fourth condition of effective leadership: establishing a community connection. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2013. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Teacher Education, Special Education, Curriculum and Instruction.

A educação é concebida como um processo fortemente impregnado pelas visões culturais, tendendo a veicular a transmissão de ontologias. É dada ênfase ao caso do ensino da ciEncia, que é encarada como correspondendo a uma versão actual e metropolizada da visão Ocidental do mundo. As fricções de aprendizagem sentidas no seio dos grupos sociais ruralizados, proletarizados e estrangeiros são estudadas como resultando de um predomínio de uma percepção e expressão associadas a fases culturais (quando da mesma cultura) ou culturas não inteiramente comunicantes com a ontologia prescrita pelo ensino. É estudada e avançada a hipótese de uma pedagogia de carácter poético que gere momentos críticos de aprendizagem a partir de traduções entre redes simbólico-materiais. A influência do estabelecimento resiliente de identidades e de processos de estereotipificação de classe/género/etnia são também objecto de pesquisa. São analisados dados dos resultados a ciências dos alunos portugueses no estudo PISA 2006 através de um modelo hierárquico e é efectuado um estudo etnológico numa escola do ensino básico. O caso dos alunos africanos é analisado com particular detalhe.

Primary and secondary teachers in Western Australian have adopted a new Curriculum Framework (Curriculum Council, 1998a) which is outcomes-focused and endorses a constructivist approach to science for school students. This research examines the influence of teachers' science content knowledge on how they make judgements about students' conceptual understandings and the extent to which follow-up activities they suggest reflect a conceptual change approach to teaching science.Primary and secondary teachers, from a range of science education histories and experiences teaching students of different ages, responded to a science task involving concepts of heat energy, combustion and ignition. They were asked to judge a student work sample about the same task, and suggest follow-up activities to support further learning.How teachers made their judgements was found to vary in accord with their science knowledge, categorised as high, midrange and low. Teachers with high science knowledge were the most adept at making accurate and appropriate judgements and had the lowest frequency of problems with their judgements. Teachers with high and midrange science knowledge were more able to link their suggestions for follow-up activities to students' science concepts, and showed greater familiarity with activities commensurate with a conceptual change orientation to teaching. Non-recognition of students' concepts as critical evidence of development was a key aspect of the judgements of teachers with low science knowledge.Recommendations are made for professional development to assist teachers to develop appropriate science content knowledge they can use to support their pedagogical content knowledge so they are able to foster students' conceptual development.

Interviews were held with 126 Year 10 and 23 Year 11 students to obtain a description of the knowledge that students had about the way they were assessed. Data was obtained about the grades the students received, or expected to receive. The students also completed the same attitude scales in both sets of interviews. The most suitable criterion for analysing the Year 11 interview data was found to be the changes in assignment grades between Year 10 and Year 11. The criterion was verified by analysing the attitudinal data. Changes in attitude, based on relative grade changes, showed that the most negative attitude changes occurred with students who had obtained higher grades in Year 10 than they had in Year 11. The differences in grading practices between the high schools and the secondary college meant that the majority of students obtained lower grades in Year 11 than they did in Year 10. Students were found to have a selective knowledge of the assessment system with the most "academically successful" students knowing more about the assessment system than the "academically less successful". Two underlying constructs, communication and realism, are used in an attempt to explain the data. The approach of asking students about assessment is recommended for use an evaluative tool in curriculum development.

Thesis (M. Ed.)--Regis University, Denver, Colo., 2006. / Title from PDF title page (viewed Oct. 30, 2006). Includes bibliographical references.

The problem of this study was to compare the perceptions o£ Kansas state legislators, superintendents, and teachers toward the Arkansas Student Assessment Program. The purpose was to generate data which would benefit educational planners in Arkansas. Hypotheses which focused on current national issues in the statewide testing movement and on issues pertinent to the Arkansas program were constructed, and a questionnaire was developed to test the hypotheses. The questionnaire was mailed to all Arkansas state legislators and to the superintendent and a fourth-grade teacher in 100 randomly selected Arkansas school districts. Responses were received selected Arkansas school districts. 70 percent of superintendent from 50 percent of legislators, 70 per dents, and 74 per cent of teachers. The chi-square statistic was applied to individual questions in test for significance of difference between the groups, the Kruskal-Wallace one-way analysis of variance by ranks was applied to the hypotheses to test for significant differences between groups. In examining individual questions relating to legislators, superintendents, and teachers, significant differences were found on twenty three of the forty items on the questionnaire. A significant difference was found on each of the seven hypotheses, as follows: (1) superintendents and teachers understand the program better than legislators, (2, superintendents and teachers view the program as more adequate than legislators, (3) legislators and superintendents view the program as more fair than teachers; (4) superintendents and teachers are more positive than legislators concerning the use of the results; (5, legislators and superintendents more than teachers feel that the program has a greater impact; (6) legislators and superintendents are more positive about the public relations aspect of the testing program than are teachers; and (7) all three groups differ concerning improvements needed in the program.

The Arizona Student Assessment Program (ASAP) is a major piece of legislation for Arizona, reducing norm-referenced standardized testing, providing performance-based assessments matching curriculum, requiring district articulation with state curriculum frameworks and assessments, collecting contextual information from districts, and producing complete profiles of schools, districts and the state. In its first year of implementation, the ASAP is appropriately examined through policy analysis rather than through an evaluation study. Six criteria for educational policy analysis developed by Mitchell (1986) were validated and used as interview questions with seven interviewees knowledgeable about the ASAP. Results of the interviews suggest the degree to which the ASAP is good educational policy and likely to make a difference in Arizona. Interviewees indicated that the ASAP is democratic, providing for both the needs of legitimate stakeholders and the general public interest. It recognizes and supports the organizational integrity of schools only if schools have begun to make some reform efforts of their own in the direction of the ASAP. The ASAP provides adequate means-end linkage for the first two years of implementation, including through school, district, and state profiles, but may need to provide additional help to districts during the first two years; furthermore, relief incentives may be needed, rather than sanctions or disincentives, to encourage continued implementation. The ASAP may not be integrated into overall state educational policy, primarily because there has been no unifying state policy until the ASAP. The ASAP may emerge as a force to reorient current and unify future policy. The ASAP will be expensive, but the interviewees felt the short and long-term benefits justify cost. The ASAP was the most politically feasible policy available to bring about the changes needed, but perhaps not the most palatable, especially to districts that have made no reform efforts of their own. Policy analysis using different criteria and evaluation studies are recommended.

The number of countries participating in large-scale international assessments has grown dramatically during the past two decades and the use of assessment results in national-level education policy debate has increased commensurately. Recent literature on the role of international assessments in education politics suggests that rankings and performance indicators can shape national educational discourse in important ways. This dissertation examines the use of one such assessment, the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), in education discourse in the United States from 2000 to 2012. The United States played a key role in the development of PISA and has participated in almost every international assessment of the past fifty years. Yet scholars have mostly overlooked the reception of international assessment in the United States. This dissertation seeks to address this gap. Using an original dataset of one hundred and thirty texts from American academic literature, think tanks and the media, I examine the use of references to PISA and to top scoring countries on PISA, e.g., Finland and China (Shanghai), during the first decade of PISA testing. I find that PISA has rapidly become an accepted comparative measure of educational excellence throughout US discourse. However, despite consistently middling American scores, attempts to turn America’s PISA performance into a crisis of the US education system have not stuck. Instead, I suggest that both global and domestic politics play a stronger role in shaping the interpretations of student achievement on PISA than does student performance. I show how the American PISA discourse: (1) is driven by political, not empirical, realities; (2) contains few calls for policy borrowing from top-scoring countries and has not engendered any direct efforts at policy reform; (3) is framed with remarkable consistency across the political spectrum; and (4) is a profoundly elite enterprise, privileging the voices of international organizations and policy makers over those of parents, teachers and students.