A logic of enumeration: the nature and effects of national literacy and numeracy testing in Australia

Abstract

This paper reveals the array of practices arising from strong policy pressure for improved student results in national literacy and numeracy tests in Australia: the National Assessment Programme in Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN). The paper provides an account of a policy context characterised by significant pressure upon teachers and principals to engage in practices to ensure improved outcomes on standardised literacy and numeracy tests, and of teachers and principals’ responses to these policy pressures. Drawing upon Bourdieu’s theory of practice, the article argues that what is described as the ‘field of schooling practices’ has become increasingly dominated by a ‘logic of enumeration’, and that high test results on standardised literacy and numeracy tests are increasingly valued capitals, evident in a strong focus upon teachers meeting, discussing and informing one another about NAPLAN; engaging in curriculum development practices which foreground NAPLAN, and; actively preparing students to sit the test, including, whether intentionally or unintentionally, teaching to the test. Such a focus has important implications for the sorts of practices most valued in schooling settings, as more educative logics are potentially marginalised under such circumstances.

Keywords:

• standardised tests
• schooling practices
• Bourdieu
• field
• habitus
• capital
• logics of practice

Notes

1. Clusters of NAPLAN results, indicating whether students are ‘below’, ‘at’, or ‘above’ national minimum standards.

2. A teacher employed on a full-time basis to fill in for absent teachers (in this case, in either of the two primary schools in the town, which because of its relatively remote location, experienced ongoing teacher shortages).

3. QCAT – Queensland Curriculum Assessment Tasks – an initiative supported by Education Queensland to help develop teachers’ capacity to moderate assessment tasks with one another, so as to develop more effective assessment tasks, and to grade student assessment more accurately.

4. ‘Like schools’ are schools considered demographically similar to individual schools, for national comparison purposes. Each individual school is compared with 60 similar or ‘like’ schools throughout Australia which are deemed to have similar socio-economic characteristics as the school in question. Theoretically, this enables comparisons between schools to be made across the country as a whole. Practically, it means schools with very different histories and cultures (including student selection practices) are compared with one another.

5. ‘C2C’ – ‘Curriculum to the Classroom’ – the Queensland state-version of the new Australian Curriculum, implemented in 2012.