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Centre for Educational Measurement and Assessment
Modern educational measurement and assessment
CEMA supports education sectors, governments, businesses, and the University by efficiently and cost-effectively providing psychometric solutions, and by developing capacity in assessment practice informed by research.
Photo by Scott Webb on Unsplash.
Consultancy
Our expertise in research extends to helping partners develop research capacity and scholarly inquiry in a range of areas related to the methodology and practice of measurement, assessment, and psychometrics.
Examples of our consultancy work in Australia and around the world:
- I.DAT: item based review and analysis
- VCAA: International literature review of school student credentialling
- CSNSW: supporting a research inquiry into teacher efficacy in teaching reading
- The AIS’ Evidence Institute: supporting evaluation of the project: Growing Evidence Informed Practice
- In schools: developed a methodology for measuring creativity; measuring 21st Century Skills; developing school-wide practice in formative assessment
- Produced a report for CSNSW on Equity and Excellence in Catholic Schools
- Built scales to measure graduate qualities such as cultural competence, critical thinking, and influence throughout the University of Sydney
- Created projects related to establishing comparability across assessments of teacher effectiveness against professional standards through the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL), the NSW Education Standards Authority (NESA) and the Schools Curriculum and Standards Authority (WA)
- Unpacking of the assessment standards of the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers into elaborations that need to be known and understood before they can be demonstrated
- Validating of the Online Literacy and Numeracy Assessment conducted in Western Australia to enable students to demonstrate that they have met the minimum literacy and numeracy standards required for graduation
- Participated in international capacity-building workshops and conferences in China, India, Lao, Kazakhstan, Indonesia, the United States and the Pacific
- Reviewing and validating items for use in selection of entrants into programs at national and international schools.
Events
Upcoming events
Part 1 – Overview of principles of Rasch measurement and the RUMM2030 software: 2-3 February 2023, 9.30am – 4.30pm.
Part 2 – Rasch Measurement Theory: 6-10 February 2023, 9.30am – 4.30pm.
Participants have the option of attending only Part 1 or Part 2 or both parts of the course – each with different pricing structures.
The Sydney Educational Measurement and Assessment Symposium is running for the first time in 2023.
Date: 1 February 2023 (POSTPONED). New date in 2023 tbc.
Past events
On a regular basis, CEMA invites speakers to the University to address our community on relevant topics, and we have also hosted a range of meetings and courses as well as contributing to events further afield.
June Associate Professor Wayne Cotton, Director of Academic Partnerships and Engagement in the Sydney School of Education and Social Work at the University of Sydney: Teaching Performance Assessment in Australia: The story of the AfGT.
April Dr Lucy Lu, Director, Education Measurement and Statistics in the Centre for Education Statistics and Evaluation, NSW Department of Education: Roadmap to Improve Formative Assessment Practices in NSW Government Schools.
October Sally Egan presented on the topic of Collecting Data and Evidence for Quality Teaching & Assessment.
February Rasch Measurement course: The first two days provided an overview of the principles of Rasch measurement and the RUMM2030 software. The second part covered Rasch Measurement Theory including model fit statistics, advanced differential item functioning, vertical equating, longitudinal data analysis and various other aspects.
September Carol Taylor: What’s wrong with NAPLAN?
May Peter McCallum and Jim Tognolini: An update on how we are going about measuring student performance on the University’s graduate qualities.
April Teaching Performance Assessment Round Table: Teacher educators from universities and colleges across NSW came together to discuss the assessment requirements regarding rigour, validity and evidence.
March Andrew J. Martin: Growth approaches to students’ academic development: findings and practice directions from a program of educational psychology research.
February CEMA Honoraries met to brainstorm future directions and Honoraries’ possible contributions to the Centre.
October Presentation at second University of Riau International Conference on Educational Sciences, Pekanbaru, Indonesia, on “Assessing skills and measuring performance of students on skills that are aligned with the needs of the 21st century: a practical example”.
July Presentation and Workshops for Beijing Huiji International Education on “How to assess higher order thinking skills and core competencies in the classroom” and “Non-cognitive assessment” in the Chaoyang District, Shingshan District and Beijing Institute of Education in China.
May Hosted five delegates from Beijing Institute of Education for a week-long academic exchange. The visitors were keen to discuss modern assessment theory including standards referencing, performance-based assessment, constructing rubrics for cognitive and non-cognitive skills and the way these assessment concepts were implemented in Australian schools. We would like to especially thank our academic staff and outside experts who gave their time and expertise to this exchange.
March Tine Nielsen is Associate Professor, Psychometrics and Psychological Testing in the Department of Psychology at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. During her visit she presented to the Educational Measurement Interest Group on the topic of “Student self-rating of grades on learning objectives: with students’ course evaluations and final course grades.”
Banner image: Photo by Isaac Quesada on Unsplash.
