EDUC4105

First Reading:

Literacy, Numeracy, Quantitative Reasoning, Mathematical Literacy and Quantitative Literacy.

From reading this material it appears to me that literacy and numeracy depend on context and as such it is difficult to have permanent definitions. This would partly explain the reason for the differences in the wordings. Generally the examples explain the same basic ideas anyway. The important parts of the reading for me were the differences between the terms, rather than the specifics of what is meant by the words.

Second Reading

Doig, B. (2001) Summing up: Australian numeracy performances, practices, programs and possibilities. ACER.

It was all very nice to see the results of the TIMSS and TIMSS-R, but not really that informative or surprising. The differences between the performances of both sexes were negligible and there is concern about the numeracy achievement of indigenous and non-English speaking students. So these trends that we are already aware of continue.

I’m not sure that comparing different year groups is that effective, since surely the achievements of different age groups will differ from year to year. I would have thought that it would be more accurate to focus on the achievement of the same group of students as they progress, although this would be far more time consuming. I confess to be a bit of a sceptic when it comes to this kind of educational research.