Predictability in high-stakes examinations: students' perspectives on a perennial assessment dilemma

Key debates within educational assessment continuously encourage us to reflect on the design, delivery and implementation of examination systems as well as their relevance to students. In more recent times, such reflections have also required a rethinking of who is authoritative about assessment issues and whose views we seek in order to better understand these perennial assessment dilemmas. This paper considers one such dilemma, predictability in high-stakes assessment, and presents students’ perspectives on this issue. The context is the Irish Leaving Certificate (LC) taken by upper secondary students (aged between 16 and 18) in order (mainly) to enter tertiary-level education. The data come from 13 group interviews with 81 students across a range of schools in Ireland. Listening to students about complex, high-stakes examining problems has a limited history within the educational assessment literature. The findings from the study address this shortcoming and depict how students’ insightful reflections can improve our understanding of these dilemmas. Further, students are more than able to reflect on their own situations with regard to high stakes examining contexts and have important contributions to make to our fuller understanding of those elements that will promote high quality and fair assessment.

Are Computer Scientists Geeks? Gender Differences In Attitudes And Experiences Related To Computing Among Secondary Education Students In Northern Ireland.

The worldwide scarcity of women studying or employed in ICT, or in computing related disciplines, continues to be a topic of concern for industry, the education sector and governments. Within Europe while females make up 46% of the workforce only 17% of IT staff are female. A similar gender divide trend is repeated worldwide, with top technology employers in Silicon Valley, including Facebook, Google, Twitter and Apple reporting that only 30% of the workforce is female (Larson 2014). Previous research into this gender divide suggests that young women in Secondary Education display a more negative attitude towards computing than their male counterparts. It would appear that the negative female perception of computing has led to representatively low numbers of women studying ICT at a tertiary level and consequently an under representation of females within the ICT industry. The aim of this study is to 1) establish a baseline understanding of the attitudes and perceptions of Secondary Education pupils in regard to computing and 2) statistically establish if young females in Secondary Education really do have a more negative attitude towards computing.