The PISA 2018 'Main Survey' data collection is now wrapping up in Aotearoa New Zealand. All that's left now is a mountain of marking, plus the ubiquitous data quality checks and creating the summary reports for all the participating schools. On a personal note, I would like to say a massive public thank you to every single school who has participated. Thank you. Ngā mihi nui. The amount of goodwill and good humour from every member of school staff who has called our little research team has been tremendously heartwarming. (A few particular standouts but not allowed to name names, sorry.) Having grown up around my teacher parents and their many teacher friends, there's a special place in my heart for teachers and the past few months have reminded me why. Although our research team has worked hard behind the scenes to try to minimise what we needed to ask school staff to do to prepare for PISA this time, one staff member at each school still got labelled 'PIS
Like everyone else at Research ED Auckland #rEDauck yesterday, I was swept up and inspired by the presentations and conversations. Here are the patterns/themes I for one noticed, in no particular order. I'm pleased to be spending my Saturday at the #rEDAuck Conference thinking about how we can become a more evidence-informed teaching profession with @tombennett71 and about 150 others pic.twitter.com/KO4swYGUFW — Jay allnutt (@MrJayall) June 1, 2018 1. Resentment toward the Ministry of Education for seemingly forcing open-plan 'Modern Learning Environments' on schools. (Reading further, the MoE denies it is 'pushing' MLEs.) And more generally for 'implementing policies not based on high quality evidence'. Key points heard include: Is there a research base to support pouring so much money into these? (After a quick search, I can't find any research base cited on the MoE website about these .) If not, are children in MLE schools b