preface
: Technology 2004
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Acknowledgements:
The Project directors acknowledge the vital support and contributions of many people to this report, including:
  • the very dedicated staff of the Educational Assessment Research Unit
  • Stephen Porteners and other staff members of the Ministry of Education
  • members of the Project’s National Advisory Committee
  • members of the Project’s Technology Advisory Panel
  • principals and children of the schools where tasks were trialled
  • principals, staff and Board of Trustee members of the 254 schools included in the 2004 sample
  • the 2876 children who participated in the assessments and their parents
  • the 96 teachers who administered the assessments to the children
  • the 48 senior tertiary students who assisted with the marking process
  • the 195 teachers who assisted with the marking of tasks early in 2005.
 
Summary:

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 can do so that patterns of performance can be recognised, successes celebrated, and desirable changes to educational practices and resources identified and implemented.

Each year, small 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 supplies. Their responses are presented orally, by demonstration, in writing, in computer files, or through submission of 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 8 students in 2004. Because some tasks have been used twice, in 2000 and again in 2004, trends in performance across the four-year period can also be analysed.

 
ASSESSING TECHNOLOGY

In 2004, the second year of the third cycle of national monitoring, three areas were assessed: music, aspects of technology, and reading and speaking. This report presents details and results of the assessments of aspects of technology. Technology is a creative, purposeful activity aimed at meeting needs and opportunities through the development of products, systems or environments. Knowledge, skills and resources are combined to help solve practical problems in particular social contexts.
A framework for technology education and its assessment is presented in Chapter 2. The framework highlights the three strands of the New Zealand technology curriculum:

• technological knowledge and understanding;
• technological capability;
• understanding and awareness of the relationship between technology and society.

Technology is a multidisciplinary activity. To attempt to represent all or even most of the areas, meanings and applications of technology within the national monitoring assessment programme would be unrealistic. After careful examination of the scope of the technology curriculum, it was decided to assess some key aspects, with a particular focus on the knowledge, understandings and skills listed above. Selected areas of content and broadly overlapping contexts (e.g. personal, home, school, community) have been used to investigate the ideas student have and the processes they can use.

 
Technological Knowledge and Understanding
Chapter 3 examines achievement relating to technological knowledge and understanding, assessed through 13 tasks. Averaged across 83 task components completed by both years, 12 percent more year 8 than year 4 students or teams produced correct or strong responses. This indicates that, on average, students have made useful progress between year 4 and year 8 in the skills and understandings assessed by the tasks.
Three trend tasks involving a total of 48 components were administered to students in both the 2000 and 2004 assessments. For year 4 students, there was a small improvement from 2000 to 2004, with, on average, three percent more students succeeding with the task components in 2004. For year 8 students there was no meaningful change between 2000 and 2004, with, on average, one percent fewer students succeeding with the task components in 2004.
 
Technological Capability
Chapter 4 examines achievement relating to technological capabil-ity, assessed through 11 tasks. Averaged across 92 task components, 10 percent more year 8 than year 4 students or teams produced correct or strong responses. This indicates that, on average, students have made useful progress between year 4 and year 8 in the skills and understandings assessed by the tasks. Gains were generally greatest on task components requiring explanation or justification.
Five trend tasks were administered to students in both the 2000 and 2004 assessments. For year 4 students, based on 48 components of four trend tasks, there was a small improvement between 2000 and 2004. On average, three percent more students succeeded with the task components in 2004. For year 8 students, based on 62 components of five trend tasks, there was no change between 2000 and 2004. On average, the same percentage of students succeeded with the task components in 2000 and 2004.
 
Technology and Society
Chapter 5 examines achievement relating to technology and society, assessed through eight tasks. Averaged across 89 task components completed by both years, nine percent more year 8 than year 4 students or teams succeeded with the task components. This indicates that, on average, students have made modest progress between year 4 and year 8 in the skills and understandings assessed by the tasks.
One trend task involving 13 components was admin-istered to students in both the 2000 and 2004 assessments. Because there was only one trend task, the results must be viewed with considerable caution. For year 4 students, there was a small improvement from 2000 to 2004, with on average three percent more students succeeding with the task components in 2004. For year 8 students there was a small decline between 2000 and 2004, with, on average, four percent fewer students succeeding with the task components in 2004.
 
Overall trends
Overall trends can be assessed by considering all nine trend tasks from Chapters 3 to 5. For year 4 students, based on 109 components of eight trend tasks, on average, three percent more students than in 2000 succeeded with the task components in 2004. As can be seen above, this result was consistent across all three chapters. For year 8 students, based on 123 components of nine tasks, on average, one percent fewer students than in 2000 succeeded with the task components in 2004.
 
Technology Survey
Chapter 6 presents the results of the technology surveys, which sought information from students about their perceptions of their achievement and potential in technology, and about their involvement in technology-related activities within school and beyond.
The results show that 81 percent of year 4 students were positive about doing technology at school in 2004, choosing one of the two positive ratings, but this was four percent fewer than in 2000 and 14 percent fewer than in 1996. Less than half of the students thought they learned “heaps” or “quite a lot” about technology at school, 45 percent reported that they would like to learn more, and less than 40 percent believed that their class did really good things in technology “heaps” or “quite a lot”. Asked about how good they thought they were at technology, 23 percent were very positive and 49 percent more mildly positive.

When asked to indicate their perceptions of the frequency of nine different aspects of technological activity at school, year 4 students identified making things and designing things as the most common activities, followed by evaluating their ideas or designs, learning how to use tools and equipment, and changing things to improve them.

Since 1996, year 8 students have remained very positive about doing technology at school, with 92 or 93 percent choosing a positive rating in 1996, 2000 and 2004, and more than half choosing the most positive rating in both 2000 and 2004. A question in the 2004 Reading and Speaking Survey showed that technology was the second favourite subject among the 14 listed subjects for year 8 students (compared with tenth for year 4 students). Seventy percent of the year 8 students thought they learned “heaps” or “quite a lot” about technology at school, but 46 percent reported that they would like to learn more, and less than 50 percent believed that their class did really good things in technology “heaps” or “quite a lot”. Asked about how good they thought they were at tech-nology, 20 percent were very positive and 63 percent more mildly positive.

When asked to indicate their percep-tions of the frequency of nine different aspects of technological activity at school, year 8 students identified making things, learning how to use tools and equipment, and designing things as the most common activities, followed distantly by evaluating their ideas or designs and changing things to improve them.
In an open-ended question, students were asked what they thought technology was. Many year 4 students appeared unsure what technology was, with 46 percent of students not responding at all. About 60 percent of those responding (33 percent of those filling in the year 4 Technology Survey) associated technology with the use of hi-tech equipment and computers, with about half as many associating technology with designing and/or making things. A very different picture emerged with year 8 students. Over 80 percent of students responded to the question, with 38 percent identifying technology with hi-tech equipment and/or computers, 36 percent with designing and making things, and 32 percent with “workshop subjects”.

 
Performance of Subgroups

Chapter 7 reports the results of analyses that compared the task performance and survey responses of different demographic subgroups.
School type (full primary or intermediate), school size, community size and geographic zone did not seem to be important factors predicting achievement on the technology tasks. The same was true for the 2000 and 1996 assessments. However, there were statistically significant differences in the performance of students from low, medium and high decile schools on 63 percent of the tasks at year 4 level (compared to 86 percent in 2000 and 27 percent in 1996), and 72 percent of the tasks at year 8 level (compared to 48 percent in 2000 and 41 percent in 1996). The high percentage for year 8 in 2004 is from the same cohort of students associated with the high percentage at year 4 in 2000.

For the comparisons of boys with girls, Pakeha with Mäori, Pakeha with Pasifika students, and students for whom the predominant language at home was English with those for whom it was not, effect sizes were used.

Effect size is the difference in mean (average) performance of the two groups, divided by the pooled standard deviation of the scores on the particular task. For this summary, these effect sizes were averaged across all tasks.

Year 4 boys averaged negligibly higher than girls (mean effect size 0.01), but year 8 girls averaged slightly higher than boys (mean effect size 0.07). The corresponding figures in 2000 were 0.03 (boys higher) and 0.03 (boys higher).

Pakeha students averaged moderately higher than Mäori students, with mean effect sizes of 0.31 for year 4 students and 0.36 for year 8 students (the corresponding figures in 2000 were 0.38 and 0.38).

Pakeha students averaged sub-stantially higher than Pasifika students, with mean effect sizes of 0.41 for year 4 students and 0.45 for year 8 students (the corresponding figures in 2000 were 0.56 and 0.47).

Students for whom the predominant language at home was English averaged moderately higher than students from homes where other languages predominated, with mean effect sizes of 0.24 for year 4 students and 0.33 for year 8 students. Comparative figures are not available for the assessments four years earlier.

 
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