The AERA Conference in Denver
- Published on Monday, 05 December 2011 02:51
From 30 April to 4 May 2010 representatives of The Educational Research Institute participated in the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) / The National Council on Measurement in Education (NCME) in Denver (USA). For several years the two associations have jointly organised conferences providing an opportunity for researchers and teachers to exchange experience and to combine theory and practice in the area of education.
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The AERA Conference
This year’s AERA meeting took place under the following motto: “Understanding Complex Ecologies* in a Changing World.”
In the course of a six-day meeting, the participants could benefit from a diversified range of professional training courses and learn about the results of the most recent research related to the creation and evaluation of teaching curricula, teaching methods, examinations, social context of education, methodology of educational research, educational law, teacher training and the assessment of teachers’ work, pedagogical psychology, the use of modern technologies at school, education management, educational reforms, and educational policies in general.
Presentations on natural science teaching methodology, formative assessment, developing and evaluating test problems, and item response theory and its applicability in contemporary examination systems proved to be particularly interesting from the Polish perspective.
The meeting was attended by several thousand AERA members. During over 60 two-hour sessions research teams presented their scientific achievements. The meeting was accompanied by presentations of the latest scientific publications on education and a number of poster sessions as well as less formal subject-specific meetings.
Established in 1916, AERA brings together approximately 25,000 representatives of higher education institutions, research centres, foundations and Governmental institutions, interested in education-related issues. The AERA mission is to disseminate knowledge on education and to foster educational development through scientific research.
The AERA website is available on http://www.aera.net
- Professional Development and Training Courses (285 KB)
- Division Highlights and Sessions (340 KB)
- Special Interest Group Sessions (353 KB)
The NCME Conference
The Conference of the National Council on Measurement in Education was preceded by a number of courses and workshops. The Conference participants could choose from eighteen all-day or half-day workshops and courses, devoted to analysing the results of research on students’ achievements, analysing examination results, verifying the quality of the test development procedures and test results dissemination processes.
Each day of the conference comprised 4 sessions conducted in 6 sections. They were devoted to various issues connected with statistical analyses, methodological aspects of testing school achievements, measurement tools (tests as a whole and specific items), as well as scaling and estimation methods employed in the measurement models.
The conference was an opportunity to learn about the latest trends in the theory of measurement and an array of analysis methods and measurement tools available. Speeches were delivered by the most prominent experts in education such as Michael Kolen, Joseph Rayan, Jeremy Penn, Deborah Harries, Sewock-Ho Kim Patrick C. Kyllonen, Tim Moses, and Henry Brown. The conference was attended by representatives of the largest skills-testing consortia, such as ETS, CITO, and NCME.
The National Council on Measurement in Education (NCME) is an organisation whose areas of activity inlcude the assessment of school achievements and evaluation. The NCME is a forum for the representatives of universities, teachers, test authors, statisticians and institutions dealing with country-specific and international examinations and educational research. For 20 years, the fair and just assessment and dissemination of knowledge in the field of teaching measurement methods has constituted the domain of the NCME interest.
The next joint AERA/NCME meeting is scheduled for New Orleans on 7-11 April 2011.
The NCME website is available on: http://www.ncme.org
Final programme (700 KB))
* refers to “social ecology”
