Abstract

We sought to examine empirically the prevailing assumption that changing assessment can leverage curricular reform. This assumption has been significantly confirmed by our research for the case of mandated high-stakes assessment. Two studies were conducted in the two most populous Australian states, New South Wales and Victoria. In the final two years of secondary school in both states, courses of study and assessment arrangements are mandated for all schools, including the private sector, by the state's Board of Studies. Congruence between mandated assessment and school-wide instructional practice was found in two states whose high-stakes assessment embodied quite contrasting values.

Comments by Ken Clements, Universiti Brunei Darussalam

The 'ripple effect' of assessment is something that has been much researched and discussed in Australian mathematics education circles during the 1990s. I think the Victorian Certificate of Education [VCE] experiment has been very noteworthy, and has generated substantial change in the educational perspectives of teachers, students, parents, and even university personnel in Victoria. This paper into the effect is of the highest order, and of international significance.

I was living in Victoria during the introduction of the VCE during the period 1986 to 1993, and was party to the large debate that its introduction generated. I then moved to New South Wales in 1993, and found myself in a very different educational environment. Externally-set examinations (at the Year 6, Year 10, and Year 12 levels) had a major effect, and education administrators were proud of their emphasis on performance (at examinations). NSW mathematics education documents were full of the rhetoric of reform, but the reality in the NSW schools was quite different from the rhetoric. There was a much greater emphasis on direct skill-acquisition, with teachers tending to simply ignore the rhetoric of the curriculum documents. In Victoria the rhetoric of curriculum and assessment change had a closer match with realities in schools.

I have no hesitation in recommending JCS agree to publish the paper you sent me. Data and analyses are triangulated, and one can have confidence that the main argument regarding ripple effect is, at least to a certain extent, consistent with the data. However what the paper lacks is an assessment of the relative situations in Victoria and NSW before the VCE experiment began in Victoria.

In the late 1980s, Victoria was well ahead of NSW in thinking about, and implementing change in school mathematics. I remember that although the annual Mathematics Education Research Group of Australasia conference for 1989 was held in NSW, 2/3rds of those present were from Victoria.

The national Mathematics Curriculum and Teaching Project (MCTP), an outstanding nationally-funded school mathematics initiative which was very influential between 1985 and 1990, was directed by two Victorian mathematics educators. MCTP published important booklets on assessment alternatives.

In the early 1990s Deakin University (in Victoria) had more practising mathematics teachers enrolled in its postgraduate mathematics education programs than all other Australian universities combined. I recall that at that time about 20% of those enrolled in the Deakin postgraduate mathematics education programs were teachers based in NSW. We at Deakin often used to say that, without having checked the name on the cover of a submitted assignment, we could tell if the assignment came from a NSW or Queensland teacher. If it did it was likely to be full of rhetoric but lacking any evidence that the reality in the schools in NSW matched the rhetoric. By contrast, in Victoria, mathematics curricula often varied substantially across schools, co-operative teaching methods had been encouraged by the Ministry of Education for two decades, and alternative methods assessment methods were becoming more widely used

In my short history of school mathematics in Victoria (M. A. [Ken] Clements Mathematics for the Minority: Some Historical Perspectives of School Mathematics in Victoria [Geelong, Australia: Deakin University, 1989) I linked the advent of the VCE with events that had already transpired in Victoria in the 1980s. Five years later, in 1994, we drew attention to the radical thinking of Victorian educators around 1990.

The point is that the author(s) of ‘Assessment: the engine of systemic curricular reform?’ pre-suppose(s) that around 1990, both States were on more or less equal footing so far as assessment of school mathematics was concerned. Then, the argument seemed to be, come the VCE and, because of the ripple effect, a top-down VCE-inspired change occurred in the lower secondary classes. This was particularly evident in the project work and extended problem solving which was in far greater evidence in Victoria than in NSW among lower secondary school teachers of mathematics.

I know, for example, that in the early 1990s very popular postgraduate mathematics education courses set assignments in which large numbers of lower secondary teachers became involved, in their own schools, in using project work and extended problem solving tasks as means of assessment. There was nothing remotely similar to this emphases coming from NSW postgraduate mathematics education courses at the time (and, indeed, very few, if any, mathematics education programs were offered at that time by universities in NSW).

So, it is possible that the 'ripple-effect' argument overestimates the effect of the VCE, attributing ‘all,’ when in fact it should only be ‘part.’ The argument that the documents in Victorian schools employed the same jargon as the VCE, does not really answer the point I've made. It is possible, indeed likely, that the reform-oriented teachers in the Victorian schools around 1990 simply adjusted their language to take advantage of the situation.

Comments by Rob Walker, University of East Anglia, UK

As you might imagine I read this with some interest. Not only because I too worked at Deakin from 1983-1999 but because during this time our three children went through the VCE, over an eight-year span.

My first comment is that I think the claim that the innovations were 'top-down' is slightly misleading. They were certainly 'from the centre' but the word 'top' is somewhat misleading. In fact, a change of government had had the effect of sponsoring a significant group of curriculum innovators (almost all teachers and ex-teachers) who had been active (especially in the unions) since the 1970s. Some university academics (at Deakin and elsewhere) supported this group through courses and subject associations but it was a more 'grass-roots', teacher-centred, movement than it might sound to an outsider from this account.

Second, the situation in Maths was distinctive, in part because of the strong role played by the professional association. Similar, but different, processes and outcomes, and sometimes major conflicts, are to be found in other curriculum areas. And the story of the VCE is hard to tell without considering some of the 'ripple effects' between subjects. For instance, for a long time major arguments raged around the compulsory inclusion of 'Australian Studies' which had consequences for the whole of the VCE (Perhaps post the 2000 Olympics this would be less controversial!).

Third, it has to be remembered too that the Victorian system is highly bureaucratized in relation to University entrance (so is too is NSW but in making cross-national comparisons this is significant). I think this is a significant contextual consideration.

Fourth, the next stage of the story, with a shift back to a Liberal (i.e. conservative) government in the 1990s was interesting -- large-scale cuts were made to schools and especially to support services, some compromises to the VCE were also made -- but less than most of us expected -- on the whole the innovation 'stuck’, albeit with less resources to implement it.