The Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER), established in 1930, is an independent educational research organisation based in Camberwell, Victoria (Melbourne) and with offices in Adelaide, Brisbane, Dubai, Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, London, New Delhi, Perth and Sydney. ACER develops and manages a range of testing and assessment services and conducts research and analysis in the education sector. [1]
On 1 April 1930, two staff members, Ken Cunningham, the inaugural chief executive and secretary Mary Campbell, established ACER's first office in two rooms of the T&G building in central Melbourne. By the end of the 1930s ACER's total staff had expanded to five.
ACER was established with a grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, a foundation itself established "to promote the advancement and diffusion of knowledge and understanding". Although the Carnegie grants were to benefit the people of the United States, a small percentage of the funds could be used for the same purpose in countries that were or had been members of the British Commonwealth. The grant to establish ACER was made following a visit to Australia by American James Russell on behalf of the Carnegie Corporation to assess the state of education in Australia and investigate appropriate means of assistance. [2]
The official title 'Australian Educational Research Council' was first selected, but then changed at the first council meeting held in 1930 to Australian Council for Educational Research, which has not changed again since.
| chief executive | Tenure | Notable contributions to education research |
|---|---|---|
| K.S. Cunningham | 1930–1954 | Chaired Social Science Research Council of Australia (1943–1952) |
| W.C. Radford | 1955–1976 | Edited Review of Education in Australia (1939–1964); Chaired committee to review of public examinations in Queensland and served on committee of inquiry into education in South Australia |
| J.P. Keeves | 1977–1985 | Editor of Educational research, methodology and measurement : an international handbook (1997) [3] and Issues in education research (1999) [4] |
| Barry McGaw | 1985–1998 | Director of Education of the OECD (1998–2005); [5] chair of the board of the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (2009–) [6] |
| Geoff Masters | 1998–Present | Developed Partial Credit Model (1982); [7] Undertook review of Queensland primary schools (2009); [8] Review of NSW school curriculum (2018–19) [9] |
CEO ACER India: Amit Kaushik
Director ACER Indonesia: Lani Ganda
CEO ACER UAE: Alan Egbert
CEO ACER UK: Desmond Bermingham
ACER is an independent, not-for-profit organisation funded through contract work, fees for services and product sales. It has more than 430 staff working in its offices in Adelaide, Brisbane, Dubai, Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, London, Melbourne, New Delhi, Perth and Sydney.
After an early focus on Australian education, ACER now provides a range of services for an expanding number of international clients.
ACER has official partnership with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). [10] ACER collaborates with UNESCO through the UNESCO Institute for Statistics and the UNESCO Office in Bangkok on initiatives such as the development of learning assessments for reading and mathematics, and associated tools and methodologies, that countries can use to monitor learning outcomes to inform educational policy.
ACER also works with organisations such as UNICEF, the World Bank, the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the Indian Central Board of Secondary Education and the United Kingdom Department for International Development, contributing to educational evaluation and reform in a number of countries. ACER is involved in the South East Asia Primary Learning Metrics (SEA-PLM) project, which assesses reading, writing, maths and global citizenship in Grade 5 students in the ASEAN region, in collaboration with the South East Asian Ministers of Education Organisation (SEAMEO) and UNICEF.
ACER research covers: [2]
Some of ACER's work is conducted through its strategic research centres: Centre for Global Education Monitoring; Centre for Assessment Reform and Innovation; and Centre for School and System Improvement. [11]
ACER's research work has contributed to policy [12] [13] pertaining to Australian education, including learning progressions, [14] the role of parents, [15] the role of arts in education, [16] teachers and school leaders, [17] post-school education and training, [18] tertiary students' engagement [19] to equity in education. [20]
A consortium led by ACER coordinated the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) from 1997 until 2015. PISA is an international assessment of reading, mathematics and science, in which more than 70 countries currently participate. ACER was engaged by the OECD to lead the first ever Assessment of Higher Education Learning Outcomes (AHELO) [21] and to develop all of the new literacy tasks for the Programme of International Assessment of Adult Competencies. [22]
ACER is also responsible for co-ordinating Australia's participation in the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement's Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study and Progress in International Reading Literacy Study. ACER has been involved in many other significant international studies and is a founding member of the Asia Pacific Educational Research Association (APERA) which links educational research organisations across the region.
In addition to research, ACER administers testing programs for scholarship selection, university entrance, psychologists and human resource management, some of which are delivered online. Tests, books and other materials are also published and sold through ACER Press for the education, psychology, human resources, special needs and speech pathology markets.
ACER is a registered higher education provider [2] offering the Graduate Certificate of Education – Assessment of Student Learning and a Masters-level unit in Understanding Rasch Measurement Theory. ACER also manages an annual research conference held in Australia each year. [23]
ACER develops or administers a large range of tests. Some of the more well known tests include:
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to education:
Higher education is tertiary education leading to award of an academic degree. Higher education, also called post-secondary education, third-level or tertiary education, is an optional final stage of formal learning that occurs after completion of secondary education. It represents levels 6, 7 and 8 of the 2011 version of the International Standard Classification of Education structure. Tertiary education at a non-degree level is sometimes referred to as further education or continuing education as distinct from higher education.
Literacy in its broadest sense describes "particular ways of thinking about and doing reading and writing" with the purpose of understanding or expressing thoughts or ideas in written form in some specific context of use. In other words, humans in literate societies have sets of practices for producing and consuming writing, and they also have beliefs about these practices. Reading, in this view, is always reading something for some purpose; writing is always writing something for someone for some particular ends. Beliefs about reading and writing and its value for society and for the individual always influence the ways literacy is taught, learned, and practiced over the lifespan.
Education in Australia encompasses the sectors of early childhood education (preschool) and primary education, followed by secondary education, tertiary education (universities and Registered Training Organisations. Regulation and funding of education is primarily the responsibility of the States and territories, however the Australian Government also plays a funding role. Education in Australia is compulsory between the ages of four, five, or six and fifteen, sixteen or seventeen, depending on the state or territory and the date of birth.
Vocational education is education that prepares people to work as a technician or to take up employment in a skilled craft or trade as a tradesperson or artisan. Vocational Education can also be seen as that type of education given to an individual to prepare that individual to be gainfully employed or self employed with requisite skill. Vocational education is known by a variety of names, depending on the country concerned, including career and technical education, or acronyms such as TVET and TAFE.
In contemporary education, mathematics education is the practice of teaching and learning mathematics, along with the associated scholarly research.
Education in Japan is managed by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) of Japan. Education is compulsory at the elementary and lower secondary levels. Most students attend public schools through the lower secondary level, but private education is popular at the upper secondary and university levels. Education prior to elementary school is provided at kindergartens and day-care centres. The programmes for those children aged 3–5 resemble those at kindergartens. The educational approach at kindergartens varies greatly from unstructured environments that emphasize play to highly structured environments that are focused on having the child pass the entrance exam at a private elementary school. The academic year starts from April and ends in March, having summer vacation in August and winter vacation in the end of December to the beginning of January.
The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is a worldwide study by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in member and non-member nations intended to evaluate educational systems by measuring 15-year-old school pupils' scholastic performance on mathematics, science, and reading. It was first performed in 2000 and then repeated every three years. Its aim is to provide comparable data with a view to enabling countries to improve their education policies and outcomes. It measures problem solving and cognition.
Glen Waverley Secondary College is a non-selective public government school located in Glen Waverley, Victoria, Australia. It is one of the largest secondary schools in Victoria, with 1,979 students and 158 teachers as of 2017. In addition, the college is one of the highest performing state high schools in Victoria, it ranked 59 out of all 530 Victorian high-schools in 2013, based on the Australian Tertiary Admission Rank (ATAR).
Before the arrival of European settlers, who introduced a formal education system addressed to the elites, education in Ghana was mainly informal and based on apprenticeship. Economic activities in pre-colonial Ghana were based on farm produce shared within households and members of each household specialized in providing necessities such as cooking utilities, shelter, clothing, and furniture, and trade with other households was therefore practiced on a very small scale. As such there was no need for employment outside the household that would have otherwise called for disciplines, values, and skills through a formal education system. After colonization, Ghana's economy became a hybrid of subsistence and formal economy.
The education system of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan includes basic, secondary, and higher education and has dramatically evolved since the establishment of the state in the early 1900s. The role played by a good education system has been significant in the development of Jordan from a predominantly agrarian to an industrialized nation over time.
Skills for Life was the national strategy in England for improving adult literacy, language (ESOL) and numeracy skills and was established as part of the wider national Skills Strategy to increase the numbers of young people and adults with adequate skills. The strategy was launched by the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, in March 2001.
Education in Western Australia consists of public and private schools in the state of Western Australia, including public and private universities and TAFE colleges. Public school education is supervised by the Department of Education, which forms part of the Government of Western Australia. The School Curriculum and Standards Authority is an independent statutory authority responsible for developing a curriculum and associated standards in all schools, and for ensuring standards of student achievement, and for the assessment and certification according to those standards.
Education in Victoria, Australia is supervised by the Department of Education and Training (DET), which is part of the State Government and whose role is to 'provide policy and planning advice for the delivery of education'. It acts as advisor to two state ministers, that for Education and for Children and Early Childhood Development.
Provision of education in the UAE began shortly after the establishment of the federation with the inception of the first university in Al Ain, Abu Dhabi, the United Arab Emirates University. Since then, the country has progressed with efforts of ensuring high literacy rates, modern programs and women's share in education. It works on improving its youths education which is why the agenda 2021 has been set. The UAE currently devotes approximately 25 percent of total federal government spending to education. The overall literacy rate is 90%.
Homeland Learning Centres (HLC) are primary and secondary educational facilities in remote Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory of Australia, sometimes referred to as homelands or outstations. HLCs are operated by the Northern Territory Department of Education instead of schools. They do not have full-time qualified teachers for their students. As of 2019 there were 29 HLCs in the Northern Territory.
Learning development describes work with students and staff to develop academic practices, with a main focus on students developing academic practices in higher education, which assess the progress of knowledge acquired by the means of structural approaches. Learning developers are academic professionals who: teach, advise and facilitate students to develop their academic practices; create academic development learning resources; and reflect on their own academic practices through a community of practice.
Daniel A. Wagner is the UNESCO Chair in Learning and Literacy, and professor of education at the University of Pennsylvania, where his research specializes in learning, literacy, child development, educational technologies, and international educational development. He is founding director (1983) of Penn’s Literacy Research Center and the federally funded National Center on Adult Literacy (1990). In recent years, the center has become the International Literacy Institute (ILI), co-established by UNESCO and the University of Pennsylvania. Wagner is also the director of Penn’s International Educational Development Program (IEDP) and is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, the American Anthropological Association, and the American Educational Research Association. He is the author numerous books and articles on learning, literacy, cross-cultural research and methodologies, and is a frequent speaker at major national and international conferences across the world. He has worked as an advisor to, among others, the World Bank, UNESCO, UNICEF, USAID, and DFID. In 2012, Wagner was appointed by Hillary Clinton as a Member of the U.S. National Commission for UNESCO. In the same year, he was named UNESCO Chair in Learning and Literacy. In 2012-2014, he served as Chair of the Brookings Global Research Task Force on Learning. In 2014, he was a recipient of the UNESCO Confucius International Literacy Prize. He has maintained multi-year educational projects in India, South Africa, and Morocco.
J. Douglas Willms is the Founder and President of The Learning Bar Inc. He is a member of the US National Academy of Education, Past-President of the International Academy of Education and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. From 1995 to 2018, Willms was Professor of Education at the University of New Brunswick, where for eight years he held the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research Chair in Human Development and for fourteen years held the Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Literacy and Human Development.
Bill Lucas is a social entrepreneur, author, researcher and motivational speaker. He is a Professor of Learning and Director of the Centre for Real-World Learning at the University of Winchester. He is the co-creator of Expansive Education Network and a founding partner of a Bill Lucas Partnership Ltd. He is also an international adviser to Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority in Australia and to the OECD/CERI on creativity.
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