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New Zealand's National Education Monitoring Project commenced in 1993, with the task of assessing and reporting on the achievement of New Zealand primary school children in all areas of the school curriculum. Children are assessed at two class levels: Year 4 (halfway through primary education) and Year 8 (at the end of primary education). Different curriculum areas and skills are assessed each year, over a four year cycle. The main goal of national monitoring is to provide detailed information about what children know, think and can do, so that patterns of performance can be recognized, successes celebrated, and desirable changes to educational practices and resources identified.

Each year, random samples of children are selected nationally, then assessed in their own schools by teachers specially seconded and trained for this work. Task instructions are given orally by teachers, through video presentations, on laptop computers, or in writing. Many of the assessment tasks involve the children in the use of equipment and materials. Their responses are presented orally, by demonstration, in writing, in computer files, or through other physical products. Many of the responses are recorded on videotape for subsequent analysis.

The use of many tasks with both year 4 and year 8 students allows comparisons of the performance of year 4 and year 8 students in 1999. Because some tasks have now been used twice, in 1995 and again in 1999, trends in performance across the four year period can also be analyzed and reported.

In 1999, the first year of the second cycle of national monitoring, three areas were assessed: science, art, and the use of graphs, tables and maps. This report presents details and results of the assessments of students' knowledge, skills and ideas in art. Art is that part of the curriculum which offers opportunities for developing abilities of personal and social expression through a range of visual media, forms and techniques. Art education is also concerned with developing an appreciation and understanding of the art of others, the ways art works are looked at, thought about and valued. This report highlights the two major domains of an art education: making art and responding to art.

CHAPTER 3 focuses on making art. The six tasks covered processes of observational drawing, creative expressive picture making, print making and clay modeling.

Averaged across all six tasks, the mean score on a 6 point global rating scale for year 4 students was 1.6 compared to 2.3 for year 8 students. This result indicates an overall improvement of skills in the four year period. The largest gap in the mean ratings occurred in the observational pencil drawing tasks where the difference between year 4 and year 8 was 1.6 on the 6 point scale. The smallest gap occurred in the crayon and pastel drawing task where the difference was 0.1. Two trend tasks were administered to year4 and year 8 students in both the 1995 and 1999 assessments. In the print making task there was a small decline in the mean global rating at year 8 between 1995 and 1999, whereas the mean global rating at year4 remained the same from 1995 to 1999. In the clay modeling task there was little difference between 1995 and 1999 in the mean global ratings at both year4 and year8.

Paintings from Landscapes Task

The focus of CHAPTER 4 is responding to art. Results in all seven tasks show a general pattern of improvement in knowledge and skills from year 4 to year 8. Good percentages of year 4 and year 8 students could successfully match pairs of paintings done in similar styles, recognise the significance, symbolic meanings and usual locations of Mäori carvings, and make broad distinctions between successful and less successful examples of picture making. However, large percentages of year 4 and year 8 students were less skillful in analyzing, and explaining or describing a range of observable features in a variety of art works. Responses tended to be broad and generalized without much recognition of distinguishing detail or narrative. Many year 4 and year 8 students struggled to identify materials, tools and processes used to make art objects that are not uncommon in New Zealand. The one trend task (Two Paintings) was administered to year 4 and year 8 students in both the 1995 and 1999 assessments. There were no differences between 1995 and 1999 in the mean global ratings on a 6 point scale achieved at year 4 and year 8. Furthermore, the distribution of global ratings across the scale shows little difference from 1995 to 1999 at year 4 and year 8.

CHAPTER 5 reports the results of the survey of students' attitudes about and involvement in art education activities. Students' attitudes, interests and liking for a subject have a strong bearing on progress and achievement. Art was the favorite of 12 learning areas for year 4 students, and the second most popular (after physical education) for year 8 students. Responses to the 13 rating items in the survey are reported along with comparative results from the 1995 art survey.

CHAPTER 6 reports the results of analyses that compared the performance of different demographic subgroups. School size, school type (full primary or intermediate), geographic zone and community size did not seem to be important factors predicting achievement on the art tasks. The other five factors revealed more substantial differences.

Boys performed better than girls on 15 percent of the tasks at year 4 level, but worse than girls on 23 percent of tasks at year 8. In addition, at both year levels girls were more positive on four survey questions about art activities in and out of school.

There were no differences between Mäori and non-Mäori year 4 students, on tasks or on survey questions. Non-Mäori students outperformed Mäori students on 23 percent of the tasks at year 8 level, but year 8 Mäori students were more positive on four survey questions.

Students attending schools with high proportions of Mäori students performed worse than students attending other schools on 38 percent of the tasks at year 4 level (all involving responding to art) and on 31 percent of the tasks at year 8 level (mainly involving responding to art). Students attending schools with more than 10 percent Pacific Island students performed worse than students at other schools on 23 percent of the tasks at year 4 level and 46 percent of the tasks at year 8 level. With one exception at year 8 level, all of these tasks involved responding to art. Most significantly, there were statistically significant differences in the performance of students from low, medium and high decile schools on 31 percent of the year 4 tasks (all involving responding to art) and 62 percent of the year 8 tasks. For these three factors relating to school ethnic mix and socio-economic decile rating, there were no differences on the art survey questions at year 4 level. At year 8 level, however, students in schools containing higher proportions of Mäori or Pacific Island students, or having low decile ratings, were more positive than other students on some survey questions.

CHAPTER 7 reports the results of analyses of the achievement of Pacific Island students. Until this year, there have been too few Pacific Island students in the National Monitoring samples to allow their results to be separately analyzed and reported. Starting this year, additional sampling of schools with high proportions of Pacific Island students permits comparison of the achievement of Pacific Island, Mäori and other children attending such schools. The results reported are for a special sample of students attending schools with more than 10 percent Pacific Island students.

For year 4 students, there were statistically significant differences in performance among Pacific Island, Mäori and other students on three of the 13 tasks. On all three tasks Pacific Island students scored significantly lower than the "other" students, and on one of these three tasks Mäori students also scored significantly lower than the "other" students.

For year 8 students, there were statistically significant differences in performance among the Pacific Island, Mäori and "other" students on six of the 13 tasks. On five of these tasks Pacific Island students scored significantly lower than the "other" students, including one task where they were also significantly lower than the Mäori students. On the sixth task, the Mäori students scored significantly lower than the "other" students.

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