Evaluating Design
 : Introduction   

The assessments included six tasks which offered the students opportunities to show their skill in evaluating designs and design ideas.

Two of the six tasks were identical for year 4 and year 8 students. Two more tasks (one for year 4 students and the other for year 8 students) were very similar and were marked using the same criteria and standards. The remaining two tasks were used at one level only: one with year 4 students and the other with year 8 students.

Two of the tasks are link tasks (to be used again in the year 2000), and therefore are not described in detail here. One of these tasks was used at both class levels, the other only at year 4. The other four tasks are released tasks for which full details are given.

This chapter presents the assessment results in the following order: Space Game

  • the released task attempted by both year 4 and year 8 students
  • the pair of similar released tasks, one attempted by year 4 students
    and the other by year 8 students
  • the two link tasks

Student performance in evaluating designs and design ideas was not strong. On many task components, less than a third of year 8 students performed at levels variously rated as ''strong'', ''very high'', ''quite high'', ''full'' or ''quite full''. Averaged across all task components which were identical or very similar for year 4 and year 8 students, 23 per cent of year 8 students performed at high or quite high levels, compared to 7 percent of year 4 students. At the other end of the scale on these same task components and average of 30 per cent of year 8 students performed at low levels, compared to an average of 50 per cent of year 4 students. Substantial progress between year 4 and year 8 is evident from these figures.