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February 2022

The following report gives feedback to assist assessors with general issues and trends that have been identified during external moderation of the internally assessed Physics standards in 2021. It provides further insights from moderation material viewed throughout the year.

Contents

• Using Internal Assessment Evidence Gathering Templates
• Assessor Support
• Evidence for Physics standards
• Communications

Using Internal Assessment Evidence Gathering Templates

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The purpose of the Internal Assessment Evidence Gathering Template is to help teachers identify and record evidence of student achievement seen or heard within the teaching and learning programme. These templates do not signal a reduction in what is accepted for each grade, but rather a means of summarising evidence for reporting achievement when more formal assessment has not been possible.

These templates must be viewed in conjunction with the assessment advice forwarded to schools, in order to ensure that valid, credible and reliable assessment has occurred before the standard is awarded. Further guidance can be found here.

Where evidence gathering templates have been used to identify evidence in lieu of a formal assessment opportunity, these should not be sent in for moderation. 

Assessor Support

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The Best Practice Workshops (online and face-to-face) offered by Assessment and Moderation Services continue to be viewed by the sector as significantly contributing to improved assessor practice:

“The workshop helped to review my own knowledge, and great to share ideas.”

“It was great having time to challenge my thinking in assessment.”

Based on the success of the ‘on request’ model and the ability to have targeted support, Assessment and Moderation Services will continue delivering this support model in 2022. Workshops or presentation slots can be requested to provide targeted support to regional or national audiences. 

Additionally, we will continue to run the Transforming Assessment Praxis programme, an online course relevant to all subjects which helps assessors learn about re-contextualising assessment resources and collecting evidence in different ways to better meet the needs of learners.

New online subject-specific short courses introduced this year have complemented the traditional workshops. These can be accessed using your Education Sector Logon. Courses available for Physics include:

• Making Assessor Judgements (91521, 91522).

Check the subject page regularly, as more online courses will be added throughout 2022.

More detailed information, including how to request or register for a workshop or online course, can be found on our Assessor Support pages or by emailing workshops@nzqa.govt.nz.

Evidence for Physics standards

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The best evidence for these standards is produced when students have been provided clear guidance, which typically includes the progression of evidence required. This progression usually consists of:

• Correctly describing the relevant physics concepts and terms (Achieved).
• Correctly describing and explaining the relevant physics concepts and terms (Merit).
• Correctly describing and explaining the relevant physics concepts and terms, and then analysing how and why these physics concepts are relevant to the application/context (Excellence).

A similar model best supports the assessment of using Physics knowledge to develop an informed response to a socio-scientific issue. The progression typically consists of:

• Correctly describing the key Physics ideas relating to the socio-scientific issue (Achieved).
• Correctly describing and explaining how or why the key Physics ideas relate to the socio-scientific issue (Merit).
• Correctly describing and explaining how or why the key Physics ideas relate to the socio-scientific issue, and then linking the issue and the Physics ideas together to recommend some sort of action (Excellence).

This clear guidance should also stress the importance of quality over quantity. Evidence from moderation demonstrates that learners can provide high quality evidence without having to construct long essays/presentations.

Communications

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Changes to moderation requirement for 2022

Changes have been made to what schools are required to send in for moderation in 2022. Only 6 samples of student evidence must be sent in, one sample each at N, A, M, E, and two more from A, M, E. There will be no level 1 external moderation, unless requested by the school.

Outcome statements in external Moderation Reports

Moderation Report outcomes are reported using consistency statements. These are not based on a numerical assessment of how many grades the moderator agreed with, but on a qualitative assessment of how the overall judgements align with the standard.

“Consistent” is used where clear and accurate understanding of all (or most) aspects of the standard have been demonstrated. There may be some misunderstandings, but these are minor.

“Not yet consistent” does not imply major issues on the part of the assessor. This is used where a clear understanding is shown of some aspects of the standard, and any issues can be identified and corrected using the feedforward in the Moderation Report.

“Not consistent” is used where there are significant issues with the assessor decisions. This may include issues such as assessment materials not being at the correct curriculum level, or when the intent or criteria of the standard have been misunderstood.

Moderating assessment materials

For most moderation submissions in 2021, the assessment materials were not moderated, as most assessment tasks were variations of the materials available from the NZIP. Some tasks were variations of the NZQA Approved tasks developed by the Ministry of Education.

NZQA welcomes the submission of innovative assessment tasks. An overview of case studies showcasing how innovative assessment practices have been implemented in schools can be found on the Spotlights homepage, with the full case studies on the Future State section of the NZQA website.

Please click on this link to give your feedback about this report.