Abstract:
Inclusion of students with additional needs in primary and secondary schools has become widespread practice in Australia and internationally. As a result, there is a need to develop resources for educators and schools to be able to facilitate this practice. The Students with Additional Needs (SWANs) program developed at the Assessment Research Centre, Melbourne Graduate School of Education, provides an integrated system of assessment, reporting, planning, and instructional advice for teachers of students with disabilities or additional needs that impede their participation in education. The aim of this study was to develop rubrics for problem-solving to extend the SWANs resources to include new domains of learning. An initial review of literature indicated that little problem-solving instruction was taking place in schools and students with additional needs, in particular, were lacking the necessary support to be successful in this skill domain. In addition, research revealed that problem-solving is a necessary skill for success in many contexts, including school and the workplace. As a skill prioritized in national and state curricula in Australia as part of the general capabilities, it was established that all students should be given opportunities to build their problem-solving capacity to the fullest extent possible. The study was conducted as part of a broader program of research, funded by an ARC Linkage grant in partnership with the Victorian Department of Education and Training (DET). It followed a previously established methodological approach to create judgement-based assessments reported against criterion-referenced learning progressions. This approach begins with the design of a set of rubrics to define the construct to be assessed. A working definition of problem-solving was proposed, based on a review of research literature, and used to draft a set of observation statements that teachers could use to describe and monitor their students’ skill development. This paper will describe the conduct of workshops with subject matter experts who critiqued and extended the draft rubrics, and mapped them to a learning progression. The rubrics were then trialled in a second workshop with experienced special education teachers (n = 13), who reviewed them and generated intervention strategies for students at different skill levels on the derived progression. Their capacity to do this was interpreted as initial evidence for the validity of the materials.