A summary of the research report – Competent Children at 12
Cathy Wylie
The
Competent Children project, funded by the Ministry of Education and NZCER,
follows a group of about 500 New Zealand children from near age 5, when they
were in early childhood education, through until they leave school.
This book gives a detailed summary of the main findings from the report of
the fifth stage of the project – Competent Children at 12 – and provides a
fascinating glimpse of 12-year-olds in contemporary New Zealand. Our look at
these children covers a wide range of their current activities, experience, and
views and also takes account of information from the study – children’s parents
and teachers whom we interviewed. At age twelve, 53 percent of the study
children were in Year 7 and 47 percent in Year 8.
As with the earlier stages of the project, we related the children’s past and
present experiences and perceptions to their competency levels. The competency
levels we chose to focus on at age 12 were: communication; perseverance;
individual responsibility; curiosity; social skills with peers; social skills
with adults; mathematics; literacy (reading comprehension, reading age, writing,
vocabulary); and logical problem solving.
The first six competencies were measured by teacher observation ratings. The
rating scales that were used and the children’s performance on them are shown
for these. The last three – mathematics, literacy, and logical problem solving –
were measured by the tests/tasks that the children did. The detailed teacher
rating scale for writing is included. The other aspects of literacy mathematics,
and logical problem solving were measured using standardised tests.
Purchase and download options
The full report is also available, either full text as a very large pdf, or
in hardcopy for $49.50.
Purchase
the full Competent Children at 12 report
Download the full Competent
Children at 12 report [pdf, 1.2 MB]
Free download: Twelve Years Old and
Competent [ 505KB PDF ]
NZCER, 2004
ISBN: 1-877293-38-5 | 
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