[MUSIC] Hello, everybody. In today's session we're talking about issues of reporting for minority students. There's two things we need to think about: how do we report to minorities as individuals? And how do we report to minorities as groups? In some of our school systems around the world, for example, in New Zealand, we quite often report on minority achievement in terms of ethnic groups. In other words, we report on New Zealand in terms of the majority Europe population, the Maori population, the Pacifica population and the Asian population. And when it comes to reporting of achievement, student's information, we require valid and reliable assessment tools and procedures in order to report on our populations of interest. International assessment programmes such as TIMMS, PIRLS and PISA provide interesting information on minority student achievement, particularly for those countries that do, in fact, have sizable minority populations, such as New Zealand and the US. These international programs allow minority student achievement to be compared beyond the borders of a particular country. For example, we might look at minority achievement in New Zealand, and compare it to how minorities achieve on similar types of assessments in the US and other countries that have sizable populations of minority students In the case of New Zealand, even New Zealand participates in the international assessment program. New Zealand government writes reports and provides information on how the major ethnic groups are achieving on those particular programs. And because a country like New Zealand has been participating in programs like TIMMS, PIRLS and PISA for a long period of time, we actually have longitudinal data on whether or not their minorities are in fact improving in terms of their achievement, in relation to the majority population and in relation to minorities in other countries. Schools in New Zealand are often very interested. in how minority students are achieving. Particularly those schools that have a large number of minority students. You see in schools, teachers are quite often interested in, are their minority students achieving in a similar fashion, and according to the rest of the population, according to those schools that are similar and have similar makeups in terms of the ethnic mix of those particular schools? Importantly, when we're looking at minority achievement, longitudinal data, data that looks at students over a long period of time is quite often very informative on whether minority student achievement is in fact progressing. There are many issues when it comes to teachers and how they report on minorities. In some cases, if a minority group is very small, or very recent to a particular school or particular country. The school or the teacher may simply lack the available tools or the available instruments to accurately report on those minorities. That group may be very small. It may not want to identify as a particular group, may, in fact, be quite difficult to assess and they may not wish to be distinguished or made known to be different from majority or other minorities within that particular classroom. Quite often, when it comes to reporting for minority groups, face to face type reporting is the preferred mechanism of reporting. When it comes to parents and community members. Quite often, you'll see in the Maori and Pacifica community, a strong desire for meetings, in culturally appropriate settings where teachers and parents and community members can actually engage in a dialogue, can actually ask detailed questions, on the reports that have been provided on their own student achievement. And it's not always possible that parents and community members are available in order to attend face to face type sessions. There may in fact be barriers such as work, lack of transportation or other difficulties that prevent face to face types of reporting. It may be that the school or the teacher may not have a good understanding of the minorities within that particular school community, may not be quite aware of what might be better ways of reporting student achievement data. Quite often minority groups are concerned about their own student achievement data. What happens to that data when it goes outside of the school? Quite often in the case of the Maori community, student achievement data quite often appears in a negative context within the mainstream media. And the Maori community, particularly Maori teachers and parents. Are very keen on having greater input into the reporting process. There are other issues that we need to consider when it comes to reporting to minorities. The reports that we're providing in languages or formats that parents can understand, are the other groups beyond the parents and beyond the community that might be interested in how a particular minority is achieving. For example, in New Zealand, the Māori community is divided into various tribal groups. Many of those tribal groups the members are no longer living within their traditional tribal boundaries and the majority are now living in the main urban areas. But, tribal authorities quite often, are interested in their members and how they are achieving and interested in obtaining school and national data on how members of their own particular tribe are achieving and what they can do in order to improve that achievement. It's also important. That, when it comes to minority groups, that we provide reporting mechanisms on non-academic subjects. For example, in the Maori and the pacifica community, parents and community members are very concerned about how well students and the children are in terms of interacting in culturally appropriate ways in formal type settings, or when it comes to entertaining visitors of formal types of presentations, or formal types of cultural performances. They want to know "Yes, our students are achieving well when it comes to numeracy, literacy, the core-curriculum type subjects." Also, very interested in when it comes to involvement in cultural activities and involvement with other students of the same culture in entertaining visitors and guests from outside their culture that the students are in fact behaving and do in fact understand cultural norms. Quite often these parents are interested in how that type of reporting is done and the formats that we use in order to report that type of information. So, when it comes to reporting to minority students, we need to consider types of reports that we are giving to minority students, minority community. Are they appropriate? Are there better ways that we can do things? Thank you. [MUSIC]
