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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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