Patrick Griffin

University of Melbourne | MSD · Melbourne Graduate School for Education

This book brings together a compendium of the collaborative research from eight PhD students and three researchers, addressing an existing problem for teachers of students with additional learning needs in mainstream classes. The purpose of this research is to describe the development of growth progressions in communication and literacy, interperso...

Students who can regulate their own learning are proposed to gain the most out of education, yet research into the impact of self-regulated learning skills on performance shows mixed results. This study supports the link between self-regulated learning and performance, while providing evidence of grade- or age-related differences. Australian studen...

This book provides a detailed description of research and application outcomes from the Assessment and Teaching of 21st Century Skills project, which explored a framework for understanding the nature of these skills. The major element of this new volume is the presentation of research information from the global assessment of two 21st century skill...

Abstract Background: Structured feedback is an important component of learning and assessment and is highly valued by candidates. Unfortunately, item specific feedback is generally not feasible for high stakes professional assessments due to the high cost of item development and the need to maintain stable assessment performance characteristics. In...

This study describes an online method of measuring individual students’ collaborative problem-solving abilities using four interactive mathematics-based tasks, with students working in pairs. Process stream data were captured from 3,000 students who completed the tasks in the United States, Australia, Canada, Costa Rica, Singapore, and Finland. The...

This chapter presents a framework for understanding collaborative problem solving, including both the cognitive and social perspectives, and identifies the construct’s theoretical underpinnings, structure and elements. It describes the circumstances under which collaborative problem solving might best be used, with consequences for the design of ta...

This chapter describes the assessment of collaborative problem solving using human-to-human interaction. Tasks were designed to require partners to contribute resources or skills that they uniquely controlled. Issues were task design, data capture, item and data definition, calibration, and the link to teaching intervention. The interpretation of t...

Validity is the most fundamental consideration in test development. Understandably, much time, effort, and money is spent in its pursuit. Central to the modern conception of validity are the interpretations made, and uses planned, on the basis of test scores. There is, unfortunately, however, evidence that test users have difficulty understanding s...

This paper focuses on the importance of changing teacher beliefs in bringing about change and improvement in classroom practice. For decades, studies on teaching and the pedagogical strategies that teachers employ in the classrooms have focused on what teachers do. This focus, however, shifted to teachers’ thought processes in the early 1970s (Cald...

This paper revolves on the premise that teachers' adoption of developmental model is more likely to improve student learning and performance as compared to the utilization of deficit approach. Deficit or clinical approach to learning has the tendency to focus on things that students cannot do, thus followed by teacher prescriptions of a 'fix-it' re...

In this chapter formative assessment is defined as a process of providing information to teachers to focus instruction on the improvement of student learning outcomes. The Department of Education in the Philippines in 2012 started the implementation of a new curriculum within a new structure which extended the education system from a Grade 1–10 to...

The Assessment and Teaching of 21st Century Skills (ATC21STM) project undertook a research and development plan that included conceptualization of 21st century skills and assessment task development. Conceptualization focused on the definition of 21st century skills. This article outlines the particular case of one of these skills, collaborative pr...

This paper describes the implementation of the Master of Teaching degree which was introduced at the University of Melbourne in 2008. The programme aims to produce a new generation of teachers (early years, primary and secondary) who are interventionist practitioners, with high-level analytic skills and capable of using data and evidence to identif...

This paper describes an approach to the assessment of human to human collaborative problem solving using a set of online interactive tasks completed by student dyads. Within the dyad, roles were nominated as either A or B and students selected their own roles. The question as to whether role selection affected individual student performance measure...

The ATC21STM project followed a research and development plan that consisted of five phases: conceptualisation, hypothesis formulation, development, calibration and dissemination. (The acronym ATC21STM has been globally trademarked. For purposes of simplicity the acronym is presented throughout the chapter as ATC21S.) Within the conceptualisation p...

Treatment of missing data and dealing with perfect scores in calibration. preparing data files for calibration. the distinction between calibration and scoring in item response modelling procedures.

Currently, complex tasks incur significant costs to mark, becoming exorbitant for courses with large number of students (e.g., in MOOCs). Large scale assessments are currently dependent on automated scoring systems. However, these systems tend to work best in assessments where correct responses can be explicitly defined. There is considerable scori...

In his book “Cognition in the Wild”, Hutchins (1995) invites his readers to scan their immediate environment for objects that were not produced through collaborative efforts of several people, and remarks that the only object in his personal environment that passed this test was a small pebble on his desk. In fact, it is remarkable how our daily li...

This chapter presents an approach to teaching 21st century skills on the basis of results from the assessment tasks described in Chaps. 3 and 4. Teachers’ understanding of the skills being assessed and described in the developmental progressions is essential if they are to implement learning and teaching activities in their classrooms across the cu...

This second volume of papers from the ATC21STM project deals with the development of an assessment and teaching system of 21st century skills. Readers are guided through a detailed description of the methods used in this process. The first volume was published by Springer in 2012 ( Griffin, P., McGaw, B. & Care, E., Eds., Assessment and Teaching of...

This chapter outlines the procedures for calibrating and establishing the properties of the collaborative problem solving tasks in the ATC21STM project (The acronym ATC21STM has been globally trademarked. For purposes of simplicity the acronym is presented throughout the chapter as ATC21S.). The chapter deals with the interpretation of these tasks...

This chapter examines the procedure followed in defining a scoring process to enable the reporting of individual student results for teachers to use in the classroom. The procedure begins with the identification of task features that match elements of the skills frameworks, and is followed by the generation of simple rules to collect data points to...

This chapter outlines two distinct types of collaborative problem solving tasks – content-free and content-dependent – each allowing students to apply different strategies to solve problems collaboratively. Content-free tasks were developed to emphasise the enhancement of inductive and deductive thinking skills. Content-dependent tasks allow studen...

Prior to the inception of the ATC21STM project, no single platform existed for the implementation of human-to-human internet interactive tasks. (The acronym ATC21STM has been globally trademarked. For purposes of simplicity the acronym is presented throughout the chapter as ATC21S.) Given the global goals of the project, the assessment tasks and th...

This paper presents the development of a guided peer-review system with the main goal of increasing the reliability and construct validity of the process for marking complex assessment tasks. This is done by adapting a host of technologies to improve peer-review, thereby facilitating an assessment system that emphasise student interaction and engag...

The primary purpose of large-scale testing is seen by many to be accountability at policy level. However, it has wider potential. In this chapter we provide a description of the context in which large-scale testing has been designed to generate information useful for intervention by teachers.

In this chapter, we discuss the issue of accountability and its effects on teaching and learning. We examine different forms of accountability, and take the stance that accountability can improve learning outcomes if accompanied by curriculum support rather than financial penalties. We draw example data from a range of national and systemic high-st...

This article describes a study investigating the effect of intervention on student problem solving and higher order competency development using a series of complex numeracy performance tasks (Airasian and Russell, 2008). The tasks were sequenced to promote and monitor student development towards hypothetico-deductive reasoning. Using Rasch partial...

One of the curriculum goals of e-learning in school education is to develop learners for 21st century skills through their daily learning activities. This paper aims to discuss the research issues and policy implications critical for achieving such a curriculum goal. A review of literature in the related fields indicates that K-12 schools should ta...

This chapter shows how the online environment is used to promote quality teaching within a research project conducted by the Assessment Research Centre at the University of Melbourne. The project investigates how teacher teams use assessment data to inform teaching decisions and extensive efforts are made to check their learning through performance...

This article describes the development of judgement-based performance measures to support the instruction of students with additional learning needs. The focus of the research was the design of assessment materials and protocols to help teachers recognise and respond to students’ proficiency in foundational literacy skills. It drew on the expertise...

The attitudes of parents and students towards schooling are often considered to be important factors associated with students' educational outcomes. This article presents the process of constructing and calibrating two scales to measure the attitudes of students and parents in Vietnam, and then linking these two scales to compare the two groups. A...

Background Despite the widespread use of multiple-choice assessments in medical education assessment, current practice and published advice concerning the number of response options remains equivocal. This article describes an empirical study contrasting the quality of three 60 item multiple-choice test forms within the Royal Australian and New Zea...

This paper describes the implementation of the Master of Teaching degree which was introduced at the University of Melbourne in 2008. The programme aims to produce a new generation of teachers (early years, primary and secondary) who are interventionist practitioners, with high-level analytic skills and capable of using data and evidence to identif...

This chapter shows how the online environment is used to promote quality teaching within a research project conducted by the Assessment Research Centre at the University of Melbourne. The project investigates how teacher teams use assessment data to inform teaching decisions and extensive efforts are made to check their learning through performance...

This chapter describes an approach to assessment task design and delivery from the Assessment and Teaching of 21st Century Skills project (ATC21S). ATC21S is an example of an innovative, international, multi-stakeholder partnership involving industry, academics, governments, and educators that is aimed at shifting the direction of assessment and te...

As a policy initiative to improve student achievement, a number of jurisdictions have introduced compulsory literacy and numeracy standards for senior secondary students, the meeting of which forms a hurdle requirement for the award of the senior secondary exit certificate. While such a requirement is sometimes justified by policymakers as a respon...

Background: Concern about the process of identifying underlying competencies that contribute to effective nursing performance has been debated with a lack of consensus surrounding an approved measurement instrument for assessing clinical performance. Although a number of methodologies are noted in the development of competency-based assessment mea...

This chapter reports on the development of an educational leadership framework used for assessing existing and prospective educational leaders. The framework is based on an elaboration and operationalization of the Sergiovanni domains of leadership, and is linked to learning theory with a focus on Vygotsky’s work in order to help identify the profe...

An overview of positive and negative potential effects of the setting of compulsory exit-level standards in literacy and numeracy for students completing their final years of schooling is presented. The overview rests on studies completed primarily outside Australia, reflecting the reality of such practices not having been implemented widely in Aus...

To many teachers, assessments are still used as the endpoint of instruction. Though scholars and researchers have advocated the use of assessment data as evidence to inform teaching, teachers need to be shown how this is done and involvement in professional development (PD) program that equips teachers with these skills is pertinent. In addition, m...

A series of tests, attitude and questionnaire scales were developed to assess the proficiency of Australian Year 5 and Year 8 students in studies of Asia. Questionnaires were administered to students, teachers and school principals to identify appropriate issues related to outcomes in terms of classroom, curriculum, and teaching and learning practi...

Following a growing awareness that many countries are moving from an industrial-based to information-based economy and that education systems must respond to this change, the Assessment and Teaching of Twenty-First Century Skills Project (ATC21S) was launched at the Learning and Technology World Forum in London in January 2009. The project, sponsor...

Portfolios have gained great popularity as a method of process-oriented writing assessment in the last 20 years. Despite the apparent advantages, as with other new methods of assessment, they still raise many controversies, particularly those regarding the validity of their contents and assessment. This article describes the first stages in the pro...

Rapid-and seemingly accelerating-changes in the economies of developed nations are having a proportional effect on the skill sets required of workers in many new jobs. Work environments are often technology-heavy, while problems are frequently ill-defined and tackled by multidisciplinary teams. This book contains insights based on research conducte...

This paper examines what factors and the extent to which they contribute to differences in reading and mathematics achievement among Year 5 students in Vietnamese schools. The data were obtained from 59,601 students involved in a 2007 national year 5 survey of student achievement. The data were analysed using hierarchical linear modelling - HLM (Ra...

This paper presents the conceptual framework and the methodology for a validation study on the interpretation and use of the 2008 University Entrance Examination English test scores in selecting students for the English Department of the College of Foreign Languages, Vietnam National University. The study employs Messick (1989)’s unified validation...

Outcomes and findings from an evidence‐based approach to targeting primary school students’ developmental reading comprehension levels for effective learning are described. Nineteen schools participated in a literacy assessment project designed to monitor and improve the reading comprehension achievement levels of their students. The project integr...

It's time to shift from a deficit model that focuses on the disability of students with additional needs to a model that focuses on their abilities.

In developed economies changing employment practices are beginning to demand changes in the way in which schools operate and how students are assessed and taught with a focus on 21st-century skills. It is clear from much of the literature on changing employment trends that employment opportunities which demand collaboration and interaction between...

The aim of the research described in this article was to build a protocol for describing students' development of emotional knowledge and understanding, and to tailor this to the requirements of assessing the progress of students with additional needs. The paper reports the establishment of such a developmental profile, using procedures for definin...

This article reports on the development of an interpersonal measure for students with additional learning needs. A questionnaire and learning continuum were constructed using a methodology devised by Griffin (2007a) for creating criterion-referenced frameworks. Teachers reported on 1619 students, ranging in age from 3 to 18 years. Analysis of the d...

It is widely recognised that deficiencies in fetal surveillance practice continue to contribute significantly to the burden of adverse outcomes. This has prompted the development of evidence-based clinical practice guidelines by the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and an associated Fetal Surveillance Edu...

The emphasis has to be on development, and teachers need to be clear about the difference between deficit and developmental learning approaches. Clinical and deficit approaches sometimes focus on the things that people cannot do and hence develop a ‘fix-it’ approach. ‘It is a myth that intervention is only needed for the struggling student’ (Tayler...

This article reports results derived from the national study of Grade 5 in Vietnamese primary schools in which teachers and pupils took tests in reading and mathematics. The test data were calibrated so that teacher and pupil results could be mapped onto the same continuum. Results showed that the overlapping tests for teachers and pupils were appr...

Family economic status is generally considered to be an important factor associated with students’ educational outcomes. However, to evaluate the strength of this contention, it is important to first have appropriate measures of family economic status. Measuring the economic status of Vietnamese people has been particularly difficult as the respond...

This article reports the results of a national survey of mathematics achievement at the end of primary school in Vietnam. A sample of more than 72000 students were assessed from 61 provinces. The items were matched to the Vietnam Mathematics curriculum for Year 5 students. Using a skills audit of the items, a variable of Vietnamese mathematics deve...

This study examined a model of assessment that could be applied nationally for Year Twelve Vocational Education and Training (VET) subjects and which could yield both a differentiating score and recognition of competence. More than fifty colleges across all states and territories of Australia field-tested the approach over one school year. Results...

This article argues that a probabilistic interpretation of competence can provide the basis for a link between assessment, teaching and learning, curriculum resources and policy development. Competence is regarded as a way of interpreting the quality of performance in a coherent series of hierarchical tasks. The work of Glaser is combined with that...

This study investigated parents' perceptions of their family's functioning and the level of early intervention support they received as they reflected on their involvement at an oral early intervention centre for children with hearing loss. Overall, parents reported high levels of family functioning and satisfaction with the services they had recei...

This article described a national study in Vietnam whereby a probability sample of students was chosen from each of the 61 provinces. A reading test consisting of 60 items was administered. The items were matched to the Vietnam reading and language curriculum for Year 5 students. Using a skills audit of the items, a variable of reading development...

Monitoring educational changes over many years is problematic when there are differences in curricula, the nature of the variables being measured, and the selection of participants. Rasch measurement techniques provide a procedure that enables each of these issues to be examined. Using archived and specially collected data, tests of numeracy undert...

English This study aimed to measure Australian students' attitudes to learning about Asia, and to identify contextual factors related to development of positive attitudes. Participants were 3359 Year 5 and 3773 Year 8 students, and 107 Year 5 and 114 Year 8 teachers. For most students, there was keen interest in learning about Asia, but there were...

The teaching and assessment of essay writing at primary schools throughout Vietnam is regulated by the Ministry of Education and Training. The analytical error-recognition method of assessment, however, does not facilitate direct interpretation of students’ writing competence. In this study, which involved samples of Grade 5 students in five provin...

This article compares the invariance properties of two methods of psychometric instrument calibration for the development of a measure of wealth among families of Grade 5 pupils in five provinces in Vietnam. The measure is based on self-reported lists of possessions in the home. Its stability has been measured over two time periods. The concept of...

To help achieve national consistency of assessment and reporting in the Australian Vocational Education and Training sector, there is a need to develop a set of national principles for graded performance assessment. This paper challenges a number of prevailing principles from both a theoretical and a ssessment perspective, namely that grades must b...

A series of tests were developed to assess the proficiency of Australian Year 5 and Year 8 students in Asian Studies. This paper presents results of analyses that involved calibrating items distributed over 14 overlapping subtests, developed to cater for state and territory curricula and two year-levels. This allowed for state and year-level prefer...

This article describes the development and pilot testing of the School Entrant Health Questionnaire (SEHQ) for the School Nursing Program in Victoria, Australia to provide a health profile of primary school children. Items likely to discriminate between healthy children and children having health concerns were generated. Domains included were: gene...

The Assessment Research Centre at the University of Melbourne was commissioned to conduct a survey of Australian students’ knowledge and understanding of Asia. Specifically, the aims of this project were: • to collect and analyse national data on Australian primary and secondary students’ knowledge about Asia and their attitudes to learning about A...

Universities in Australia have been using the course experience questionnaire (CEQ) for a number of years to measure the quality of teaching. Recently, there have been increasing calls for a broader perspective that takes into account the potential of non-classroom context influences on the student learning experience. This project undertook to dev...

With a move towards an outcomes-based agenda, requirements for monitoring progress is becoming an increasing pressure for colleagues in the early years of schooling, and more recently during the preschool period. How best to translate this imperative into the preschool context has been a challenge that early childhood educators across the States an...

This book describes students' accumulation of literacy and enables teachers to assess students independently of standardized tests. The "Profiles" includes scales and reporting formats, sample materials, guidelines for assessment, and norms. Reporting software issued separately complements this book. The chapters are: (1) "What Is a Profile?"; (2)...

Edgecombe GA, Avant KC, Griffin P, Corneille K. International Journal of Nursing Practice 1998; 4: 40–50 School nurse assessment of primary school children: Analysis of data from the school entrant health questionnaire The School Entrant Health Questionnaire (SEHQ) has been used by the School Nursing Program in Victoria since April, 1997. The SEHQ...