Academic addresses national conference
Giving schools and individual teachers greater autonomy in testing and assessing students could pay high dividends, according to University of the Sunshine Coast Associate Professor in Education Juhani Tuovinen.
Dr Tuovinen told a recent national conference of education experts on the Gold Coast that this approach to student assessment was a cornerstone of Finland’s success in developing the world’s highest-achieving educational system.
The USC academic was a keynote speaker at the annual Performance Measurement and Reporting Taskforce (PMRT) National Measurement Roundtable Conference held at Surfers Paradise on November 3-4.
One hundred delegates attended the conference, including executives, technical experts, government advisors, curriculum experts, regional directors, school principals and managers from national testing bodies and education agencies.
Dr Tuovinen said this year’s annual conference held special significance following the introduction of nationally-standardised tests for all Australian students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 this year.
He told the conference that Finland provided a strong example of the benefits of giving schools and individual teachers considerable autonomy in testing and assessment.
“In Finland, the only across-school assessment is the matriculation examination,” he said. “All other testing consists of school-based assessments, where the emphasis is on helping students to learn better and learn how to assess their own learning for themselves.
“This systematic approach to teaching children to take responsibility for their own learning and assessment has paid off handsomely. Finland is now the leading nation in PISA (Program for International Student Assessment) international tests conducted by the OECD.
“The country’s national curriculum is a brief document, which is then interpreted by highly-educated teachers in the light of the sample national evaluations to best suit the needs of the local students.”
Queensland’s Department of Education, Training and the Arts hosted the PMRT conference which had the theme “Beyond testing ... there is much more to testing than the tests themselves”.
Dr Tuovinen said the event focussed on the measurement and reporting of student achievement, with special emphasis on the impact and design of testing at individual, school, state, and national levels.
— Terry Walsh