Year 10
Humanities and Social Sciences Support Materials
Assessment Principle 1
Assessment should be an integral part of Teaching and Learning
Economics and Business snapshot: Analysing economic indicators
Humanities and Social Science/Knowledge and understanding/Economics and Business/Economic performance and living standards and Skills/Analysing/Evaluating
| Content Description |
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Indicators of economic performance (e.g. economic growth rates, unemployment trends, inflation rates, human development index, quality of life index, sustainability indexes) and how Australia’s economy is performing Analyse information and/or data in different formats (e.g. to explain cause and effect relationship; comparisons, categories and subcategories, change over time) Apply subject-specific skills and concepts in familiar, new and hypothetical situations Critically evaluate information and/or data and ideas from a range of sources to make generalisations and inferences; propose explanations for patterns, trends, relationships and anomalies; predict outcomes |
Nature of the assessment
Data interpretation
Purposes of the assessment
To gather information about students’ ability to interpret a range of measures of economic performance
Stage in the Teaching sequence
Middle of the teaching cycle – formative assessment
Assessment task
Students were provided with a range of resources and charts showing data on key economic indicators for Australia’s economy. The students then used the evidence from the data to identify each of the key economic indicators and to describe the general state of the economy based on the data provided.
Assessment process
Students were provided with the data and a series of short-answer questions. They were given a set time to provide written answers. Following this, the teacher went through all of the questions with the class, using student responses to provide detailed feedback about misunderstandings and identifying areas that required additional teaching.
Using the information
The teacher used her observation of the students’ written work and their contribution to the class discussion to evaluate the students’ ability to interpret the key economic indicators.
It was evident that some students had difficulty in interpreting the data and were not able to make generalisations about the state of the economy, while some of the students were able to make predictions about where each of the key economic indicators was headed. From her observation of the students’ responses, the teacher was able to refine her teaching program to meet their individual needs.