In Australia, under the National Assessment Plan, educational accountability testing in literacy and numeracy (NAPLAN) is undertaken with all students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 to monitor student achievement and inform policy. However, the extent to which these data have been analysed to report student progress is limited. This article reports a…

This article reflects the qualitative case study data collected via semistructured interviews to examine subjective experiences of racialized children, parents, and educators with the Grade 3 Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO) standardized test preparation and administration in Ontario, Canada. This article strives to explore,…

COVID-19-induced school closures generated great interest in tutoring as a strategy to make up for lost learning time. Tutoring is backed by a rigorous body of research, but it is unclear whether it can be delivered effectively remotely. We study the effect of teacher-student phone call interventions in Kenya when schools were closed. Schools…

This article investigates 8-and 9-year-old girls' use of the popular game "Minecraft" at home and school, particularly the ways in which they performatively "bring themselves into being" through talk and digital production in the social spaces of the classroom and within the game's multiplayer online world. We explore how the…

This article proposes the use of a standards-based approach to reporting results from large-scale assessment surveys in South Africa. The use of this approach is intended to address the key shortcomings observed in the current reporting framework prescribed in the national curriculum documents. Using the Angoff method and data from the Annual…

Reading is typically considered a survival skill in our technology- and literacy-bound culture. Individuals who struggle with learning to read are at significantly elevated risk for a number of negative outcomes, including school failure, under- and unemployment, and special education placement. Thus, those who do not learn to read fluently will…

The National Assessment Program--Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN)--is conducted through standardized tests that are administered to all Australian students in Years 3, 5, 7, and 9. It was implemented in 2008 by the same Labor government that introduced My School (www.myschool.edu.au). Enjoying bipartisan political support and popular with the public…

The Individualised Education Programme (IEP) is a fundamental document that describes all educational responses to the additional support needs of students, setting up the guideline for their learning and developmental experiences. Specifically, the IEP goals represent the personal destination translated into desirable behaviours and skills that…

Why has large-scale standardised testing attracted such a bad press? Why has pedagogic benefit to be derived from test results been downplayed? The paper investigates this question by first surveying the pros and cons of testing in the literature, and goes on to examine educators' responses to standardised, large-scale tests in a sample of low…

Most of the existing ecological studies have been conducted during class instructional time. The purpose of this qualitative study was to describe (a) how students (N = 102; grade 2-4) engaged in a strategy named "Health Passport" taking place mainly outside of school time and (b) how four physical education teachers held students…

Government-imposed testing has been introduced in Canada to establish benchmarks, improve accountability, and measure achievement consistently. In this study 133 teachers from urban and rural Manitoba completed surveys (a response rate of 34%) to ascertain their attitudes toward mandated testing. Results indicated that most teachers expressed…