This study examined the validity of data collected from a novel online story retell task. The task was specifically designed for use by junior school teachers with the support of speech-language therapists or literacy specialists. The assessment task was developed to monitor children's oral language progress in their first year at school as part…

In this paper, we explore student solutions to a free response mathematical assessment task which had opportunities for students to notice structural properties in the context of number systems. In total, 308 students aged between 10 years to 13 years participated in the study. Their responses were analysed to determine whether they noticed…

In this article, I describe the challenges students faced in interpreting literary--or fictional--texts in the National Monitoring Study of Student Achievement in the English learning area. I explain why it is important for students to learn how to interpret literary texts at school and consider why they might struggle with this important skill. I…

This article focuses on the 2019 National Monitoring Study of Student Achievement (NMSSA) assessment of student ability in writing. It begins with an overview of the study and its results, then turns to students' use of planning strategies to support their writing. Drawing on research on the association between planning and achievement in writing,…

The project team for the National Monitoring Study of Student Achievement (NMSSA) has recently begun writing reports focussed on how insights generated by the study can be used to promote learning and teaching. The reports are written primarily for teachers. This short article introduces the reports with a special emphasis on the mathematics and…

Science capabilities were introduced within the New Zealand context following the revised "New Zealand Curriculum" (NZC). These capabilities are a small set of things that NZC intends students to be able to do in science, which weave the nature of science with content strands. Using pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) to understand…

Current trends in mathematics education emphasise student-centred learning; and internet-based pedagogies, such as online mathematics instructional platforms, go even further in reducing the role of the classroom teacher. In this paper I consider how teachers may exercise agency and professionalism in the context of online mathematics instruction.…

Background and Context: Computational Thinking (CT) has been recently integrated into new and revised Digital Technologies content (DTC) in the Technology learning area of the New Zealand School Curriculum. Objective: To aid this change, this research examined how CT supports learning outcomes in both music and programming with the Sonic Pi…

The different strategies and methodologies used by teachers in their day-to-day activity may have an impact on the academic performance of their students. Indexes constructed to summarize how teachers address different teaching tasks can be used to quantify the teaching activities' associations with academic results. In the IEA's Trends in…

This article describes the development of an assessment system for adolescent reading comprehension. It presents a research context--a reading intervention implemented in middle and high schools in an urban district--which became the impetus for the work. The article outlines the organizational principles of construct modeling that guided the…

In 2012 a new education monitoring system called the National Monitoring Study of Student Achievement (NMSSA) began collecting information about the achievement of Year 4 and Year 8 students enrolled in English-medium schools. Over the last 5 years it has had contact with over 20,000 students from more than 1,000 schools. This Assessment News…

In new generation schooling contexts, the interaction of human activity, space, and objects, co- produce spatialised practices. There is the fluid use and continuous re-design of learning spaces, where dynamic socio-material practices support the ongoing and negotiated development of curriculum, pedagogy and assessment. Links are forged in this…

Studies of disciplinary work have converged with studies of classrooms to highlight the social and cultural nature of disciplinary knowledge and practices, and of classroom learning and assessment. For students to become discerning and autonomous/authoring learners, classroom assessment needs to ensure students experience what it means to exercise…

Writing is a demanding, multidimensional process that is, cognitively and socially, highly complex. Success in writing is vital to success in education and in the workforce. Writing is increasingly used to demonstrate learning through schooling and has the potential to contribute toward understanding and learning in the content areas. The project…

Intervention models based on data use can be effective in raising student achievement. This article presents 3 studies of one such model which had reported improved reading comprehension levels in 7 poor urban multicultural schools serving indigenous and ethnic minority communities. The intervention (the Learning Schools Model) used a process…