Maori 2004

: 2004 (English)

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
• Lisa Rodgers and other staff members of the Ministry of Education
• members of the Project’s National Advisory Committee
• members of the Project’s Mäori Immersion Education Advisory Committee and Mäori Reference Group
• members of the Project’s Music, Technology, Reading and Speaking advisory panels
• He Kupenga Hao i te Reo Ltd.
• principals and children of the schools where tasks were trialled
• principals, staff and Board of Trustee members of the 12 schools included in the 2004 Mäori medium sample
• the 113 children who participated in the assessments and their parents
• the 4 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.

The following Summary is presented in English; for the Mäori translation
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THE PROJECT

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). Only year 8 students are assessed in Mäori medium. Different curriculum areas and skills are assessed each year, over a four-year cycle. In 2004, the areas covered were music, aspects of technology, reading and speaking.

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.

Dolls - Täkaitia

THIS REPORT

This report focuses solely on year 8 students learning in Mäori immersion education programmes. In 2004, 60 percent of these Mäori immersion students were learning in immersion schools (mainly Kura Kaupapa Mäori), while the other 40 percent were learning in immersion classes (located in mainstream schools, but having 80 to 100 percent of instruction conducted in Mäori). For this special sample of students learning predominantly in Mäori, the assessment tasks and task materials were developed in Mäori or translated into Mäori, and were administered by teachers experienced in Mäori immersion settings.

1 : KEY FEATURES

Chapter 1 explains key features of the National Education Monitoring Project that are relevant to this report.

2 : ISSUES

He Körero Paki – Tell a Story

Chapter 2 explains some concerns about the interpretation of the 2004 assessments in Mäori immersion education settings.

The area of greatest concern was the fact that tasks were administered in English for about 30 percent of the students, thus compromising the aim of the assessments. This arose because of quite limited competence in Mäori among students in the mainstream schools with Mäori immersion classes but those schools were included as they were listed as having Level 1 immersion classes. There must also be some concern about the representativeness of the sample of schools and students because two of the schools with Mäori immersion classes in the original sample withdrew. It is not possible to be confident that the replacement students were closely comparable to those in the schools that withdrew.

3 : MUSIC

Chapter 3 presents the results of the assessments of students’ knowledge, understanding and skills in music. Music education represents part of a balanced curriculum for all New Zealand school students, giving learners opportunities to develop their aesthetic appreciation, their capacities for original and imaginative expression, and their abilities to use and interpret musical elements for a variety of purposes and with a range of materials. It involves skills of listening, singing, playing, moving, directing, reading and recording. Nineteen assessment tasks explored students’ capabilities in these areas.

Performance on these music tasks varied widely, with strong performances by some students or teams and very weak performances by some others. The performance was higher on practical rhythmic activities and lower on tasks that made some use of standard music notation.

4 : TECHNOLOGY

Chapter 4 presents the results of the assessments of students’ knowledge, understanding and skills in aspects of technology. Technology is a creative, purposeful, multidisciplinary 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 within particular social contexts. Its extensive cross-curricular possibilities reflect its pervasiveness throughout the world in which we learn and live as individuals, groups and societies. Only some key aspects of the technology curriculum could be assessed, because of limitations of time and resources for the assessments. Twenty assessment tasks explored students’ capabilities in these aspects.

Many students identified some key issues in these technology tasks, but tended to give little attention to more subtle or technical issues. Their answers commonly lacked detail and elaboration, especially when asked to give explanations.

He Këmu Rorohiko – Computer Games

5 : READING

Chapter 5 presents the results of the assessments of students’ understanding and skills in reading. Reading requires an ability to interpret printed symbols in order to get meaning out of those symbols. In turn, essential technical skills are often a precondition for higher level skills such as identifying main points, analysing, thinking critically and making inferences from what is read. Children encounter written language in a variety of settings including the home, the school and the community, and they see it presented in a variety of forms such as signs, labels, letters, brochures and books. To be able to read is to be able to obtain personal satisfaction from literary experiences and to use written information for knowing and doing. Twenty assessment tasks explored students’ capabilities in reading.

Students handled well tasks involving oral reading in Mäori. Because of policies in Kura Kaupapa Mäori, few of the students could be assessed reading English. There was a wide range of performance on tasks involving reading comprehension in Mäori, with comparatively few students showing depth of understanding or identification of the finer details in text.

6 : SPEAKING

Chapter 6 presents the results of the assessments of students’ understanding and skills in speaking. Children first encounter language and begin to learn to use and interpret it in its spoken form well before they commence formal education. The development of their language from fundamental beginnings through to more sophisticated constructions requires increasingly rich and complex opportunities and interactions in personal, social, cultural and curricular settings. These experiences lead to understandings about the meanings, effects and consequences of what is said, and help children to gain greater control over what they say and how they say it. Twenty assessment tasks explored students’ capabilities in speaking.
Student performance ranged widely on these speaking tasks. Most students performed well in giving instructions and introducing themselves, but the average performance level was lower for creative speaking activities and activities that involved reporting details of events and processes. Some students got very low scores in these types of activities.

Hökioi - Kupu Wai

7: SURVEYS

Chapter 7 reports the results of surveys of students about their curriculum preferences, experiences and perceptions of their achievement and potential in music, technology, reading and speaking.

The students were positive about doing music at school. They reported that the most frequent musical activities in school were listening to music and singing. Listening to music was clearly the most popular musical activity in school, followed by singing, but all other music activities were liked by more than 40 percent of students and only dancing and making up music were strongly disliked by substantial percentages of students. Musical activities at home presented a similar picture of involvement and preferences. Thirty percent of students said that they learned music or belonged to a music group outside of school.

Technology was the most popular subject with these students. Fifty-seven percent of the students thought they learned “heaps” or “quite a lot” about technology at school, but 62 percent reported that they would like to learn more, and only 57 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, 38 percent were very positive and 55 percent more mildly positive. In their own time, construction projects were the most popular activity that students regarded as technology, followed by cooking or sewing and using computers.

Reading was a less popular school curriculum area than music and technology, but it was still liked to some degree by more than 80 percent of the students. The favourite reading activity at school was reading with a buddy or partner, but about one third of the students reported that they never got to read to others at school. For reading in their own time, story (fiction) books were most popular, followed by magazines, comics and poetry. About one third said that they had a favourite author.

More than 70 percent of the students were positive about talking to a group in their class and about how often they got to talk to others in their class.