In:
Australian Journal of Education, SAGE Publications, Vol. 59, No. 1 ( 2015-04), p. 5-21
Abstract:
Each year, all Australian students in grades 3, 5, 7 and 9 sit nationwide large-scale tests in literacy and numeracy which have their validity frequently questioned. We compared the performance of grade 3 twins on these large-scale reading tests with their performance on three individually administered literacy tests in comprehension, word reading and vocabulary within a genetically sensitive design. Comprehension, word reading and vocabulary accounted for a substantial amount of the variance in school reading tests. Performance on large-scale reading tests and individually administered tests was moderately to substantially heritable and the same genes contributed to performance in both types of test. These results confirm that large-scale school reading tests measure, at least in part, the literacy skills assessed by individual tests that are frequently considered to be the ‘gold-standard’ in testing. Also, as could be expected, the individually administered literacy tests were more closely related to performance on large-scale reading tests than to performance on large-scale school numeracy tests.
Type of Medium:
Online Resource
ISSN:
0004-9441
,
2050-5884
DOI:
10.1177/0004944114563775
Language:
English
Publisher:
SAGE Publications
Publication Date:
2015
detail.hit.zdb_id:
2420054-2
SSG:
5,3
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