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The
assessments included nine tasks investigating students’
knowledge, understandings and processes in the area of resources
and economic activities. This area focuses on people’s allocation
and management of resources, and their participation in economic
activities.
Six of the tasks were identical for both year 4 and year 8 students,
one was administered only to year 4 students and two were administered
only to year 8 students. Three are trend tasks (fully described
with data for both 2001 and 2005), two are released tasks (fully
described with data for 2005 only) and four are link tasks (to
be used again in 2009, so only partially described here).
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The tasks are presented in the three sections: trend tasks, then
released tasks, and finally link tasks. Within each section, tasks
attempted by both year 4 and year 8 students are presented first,
followed by tasks attempted only by year 4 students and then those
attempted only by year 8 students.
Averaged across 58 task components administered to both year 4
and year 8 students, 10 percent more year 8 than year 4 students
succeeded with these components. Year 8 students performed better
on 49 of the 58 components.
On the trend tasks, there was no meaningful evidence of change
between 2001 and 2005. Averaged across just seven trend task components
attempted by year 4 students in both years, three percent fewer
succeeded in 2005 than in 2001. Losses occurred on six of the
seven components. At year 8 level, again with seven trend task
components included, on average one percent fewer students succeeded
in 2005 than in 2001. Losses occurred on five of the seven components.
Understanding of resource and economic issues proved a major challenge
for both year 4 and year 8 students, and was clearly beyond the
reach of a majority of year 4 students. By year 8, many students
are starting to grasp these issues, but it is probably fair to
say that the issues still have limited perceived relevance for
them at this stage in their lives. It appears that environmental
issues have captured their attention and understanding to a substantially
greater extent than issues of economics and scarcity of resources. |
