Assessment, evaluation and education policy

Teacher education is one of Australia’s nation-building priorities. ACU and ILSTE play a key role in research and expertise on the teacher education quality and teaching quality within Australia. Researchers at ILSTE apply innovation to standards, judgement, moderation to improve the preparation and quality of teachers entering Australian classrooms and develop evidence about student learner motivation and engagement.

ILSTE’s Assessment research, based on significant engagement with higher education institutes and industry, informs highly relevant and practical tools to support teaching quality and covers two areas: Assessment and evaluation and Learner engagement and assessment. Researchers in this area also contribute to the Research Centre for Digital Disruption in Assessment and Education.

1. Assessment and evaluation: ILSTE is driving a large-scale evidence-informed improvement of teaching and learning, which was a national gap. Using digital technologies, a main outcome is a new competence assessment to evaluate and benchmark graduate readiness. The Standards and Moderation Project, developed and led by ACU, and has generated the Graduate Teacher Performance Assessment (GTPA®), a new competence assessment that uses innovative digital technologies to evaluate and benchmark graduate readiness. The GTPA addresses identified policy-practice concerns about the quality of initial teacher education.
   
2. Learner engagement and assessment: The research is developing new knowledge about the nature of student learning and ways of improving learning engagement and learning outcomes in key curriculum areas. The research also has a central focus on the work of education professionals ensuring educational opportunities for disadvantaged students from diverse backgrounds are personally meaningful, culturally relevant, and future-oriented.

Our research team

The research team has expertise in assessment and learning analytics; standards-referenced assessment; standards, human judgement and moderation practice; online moderation; teacher judgment; feedback; student engagement; initial teacher education; policy implementation and enactment; policy sociology in education; school reform; digital disruption in education; teachers’ work in curriculum implementation; language and literacy education; literacy learning and engagement; motivation research; classroom learning and teaching; pedagogical development and change; and sociocultural studies of learning.

Meet our team

Featured projects

Evidence for Quality in Initial Teacher Education (EQUITE)

The EQuITE system provides a central source of Evidence for Quality in Initial Teacher Education enabling outcomes for improving quality and impact of teacher education through collaborative partnerships.

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Graduate Teacher Performance Assessment (GTPA)

The GTPA responds to calls for Australian teacher preparation programs to demonstrate that graduate teachers can apply teaching practices that positively impact on their students learning.

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Online moderation of teacher assessment using exemplars

This ARC Linkage project aims to generate new knowledge regarding standards in action and the metacognition of judgement making through an innovative approach utilising psychometric scaling and online moderation.

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Raising the bar: Promoting higher-order literacy skills

The project investigates contradictions in policies and practices in Australia and Hong Kong to understand why and how disadvantaged students are supported or unsupported to learn higher-order literacy skills.

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More projects

• Assessment for learning audit instrument
• Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority: NAPLAN Writing Assessment Review
• Cross-institutional moderation
• Digital learning assessments and big data
• Examining university students engagement and disengagement in learning English
• Improving disadvantaged students reading outcomes
• Queensland Government NAPLAN review
• Research partnerships and improvement science
• Standards and moderation (SAM)
• Effective teacher-based assessment adjustments for students with disability
• Writing assessment inquiry partnerships
• Writing instruction for impact