: Introduction
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The focus of this chapter is on relationships with other people, and includes assessment tasks dealing with relationships in classrooms, schools, families and the wider community. Students were asked to show what they understood about how the attitudes, values, actions and needs of people interact, and the influence of social and cultural factors.

Ten tasks were identical for year 4 and year 8 students, two were administered to both years but with minor changes or deletions for year 4 students, and two were administered only to year 8 students. Five are trend tasks (fully described with data for both 1998 and 2002), three are released tasks (fully described with data for 2002 only), and six are link tasks (to be used again in 2006, so only partially described here).

The tasks are presented in the three sections: trend tasks, then released tasks and finally link tasks. Within each section, tasks administered to both year 4 and year 8 students are presented first, followed by tasks administered only to year 8 students.

Many of the tasks were marked both descriptively and evaluatively. Descriptive components explored students’ ideas about issues and their possible solutions, while the evaluative components were ratings of the overall merit of the students’ responses. In most cases, only the evaluative components are included in the comparisons below.

Averaged across 23 task components administered to both year 4 and year 8 students, 14 percent more year 8 than year 4 students succeeded with these components. Year 8 students performed better on all of the components.

Trend analyses showed no meaningful change since 1998 for year 4 or year 8 students, but with a hint of an improvement for year 8 students. Averaged across 9 task components attempted by year 4 students in both years, 1 percent more students succeeded in 2002 than in 1998. Gains occurred on 4 components and losses on 4 components. At year 8 level, with 10 task components included in the analysis, 3 percent more students on average succeeded with the task components in 2002 than in 1998. Gains occurred on 6 components, with losses on 4 components.

 
 
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