title: Assessing the mathematical thinking of young children in New Zealand: the initial school years

authors: Young-Loveridge, Jennifer

subjects: mathematics

abstract: This paper provides an overview of assessment policy and practice in mathematics for early years classrooms in New Zealand between 1993 and the present day. It describes the introduction of school entry assessment for children starting school at age five. A numeracy initiative, the Numeracy Development Projects (NDP), for students in Years 1-10 was developed a decade ago out of a pilot project with Count Me In Too. Most recently, a consultation process was undertaken as part of introducing national standards in mathematics for students in Years 1-8. The paper also presents some data from assessments by teachers as part of the NDP initiative, showing the complex relationships between number knowledge and strategy for students in Years 1-4. The paper concludes by asking that individual diagnostic interviews to enable the provision of quality teaching continue to be supported as part of the introduction of national standards.

text: Assessing the mathematical thinking of young children in New Zealand: the initial school years This paper provides an overview of assessment policy and practice in mathematics for early years classrooms in New Zealand between 1993 and the present day. It describes the introduction of school entry assessment for children starting school at age five. A numeracy initiative, the Numeracy Development Projects (NDP), for students in Years 1-10 was developed a decade ago out of a pilot project with Count Me In Too. Most recently, a consultation process was undertaken as part of introducing national standards in mathematics for students in Years 1-8. The paper also presents some data from assessments by teachers as part of the NDP initiative, showing the complex relationships between number knowledge and strategy for students in Years 1-4. The paper concludes by asking that individual diagnostic interviews to enable the provision of quality teaching continue to be supported as part of the introduction of national standards.

year: 2011

title: Surrogate-Assisted Evolutionary Algorithms for Wind Farm Layout Optimisation Problem

authors: Zheng, Chen

subjects: surrogate-assisted evolutionary optimisation

abstract: Due to the increasing need for computationally expensive optimisation in many real-world applications, surrogate-assisted evolutionary algorithms have attracted growing attention. In the literature, surrogate-assisted evolutionary approaches have been successful in highly computational expensive optimisation problems. However, surrogates have not been used with the Wind Farm Layout Optimisation Problem (WFLOP) before.

In this work, an evolutionary approach using surrogate modelling techniques to reduce the computational cost of the WFLOP is studied. The WFLOP mainly focuses on finding the optimal geographical placement of wind turbines within a wind farm in order to maximise power generation. But evaluating wind farm layout is very computationally expensive. The purpose of using surrogates is to approximate the real evaluation function of an evolutionary algorithm, but the surrogates can be computed more efficiently. The aim of this study is try to discover whether if surrogate-assisted evolutionary approach is effective on the WFLOP.

An analytical wake model is used to calculate the velocity deficits in the downstream generated by individual turbines. A set of initial offline experiments was conducted based on a dataset of wind farm layouts sampled from the space of all layouts, using biased random walk. These experiments were designed to discover which features lead to construction of an accurate surrogate model. According to the results of these experiments, polar coordinates (sorted according to distance) as features are selected for learning. A multilayer perceptron (MLP) neural network and a tree-based regression model (M5P) are chosen as the surrogate models to approximate the real fitness function in conjunction with an (mu, lambda) evolutionary strategy. Two previously presented BlockCopy operators are used in the evolutionary strategy. The surrogate models are managed using a modified version of the Pre-selection strategy and the Best strategy.

Our evaluation used four benchmark wind farm scenarios with dimensionality ranging from 200 to 1420 dimensions. The evaluation results show that our preliminary MLP and M5P surrogate models did not improve the optimisation results over traditional evolutionary strategies due to scalability issues. The scalability is a known weakness of many surrogate-assisted evolutionary approaches for the reason that most of them are designed for low-dimensionality problems. However, the research should continue on this topic because of its importance to renewable energy.

text: Surrogate-Assisted Evolutionary Algorithms for Wind Farm Layout Optimisation Problem Due to the increasing need for computationally expensive optimisation in many real-world applications, surrogate-assisted evolutionary algorithms have attracted growing attention. In the literature, surrogate-assisted evolutionary approaches have been successful in highly computational expensive optimisation problems. However, surrogates have not been used with the Wind Farm Layout Optimisation Problem (WFLOP) before.

In this work, an evolutionary approach using surrogate modelling techniques to reduce the computational cost of the WFLOP is studied. The WFLOP mainly focuses on finding the optimal geographical placement of wind turbines within a wind farm in order to maximise power generation. But evaluating wind farm layout is very computationally expensive. The purpose of using surrogates is to approximate the real evaluation function of an evolutionary algorithm, but the surrogates can be computed more efficiently. The aim of this study is try to discover whether if surrogate-assisted evolutionary approach is effective on the WFLOP.

An analytical wake model is used to calculate the velocity deficits in the downstream generated by individual turbines. A set of initial offline experiments was conducted based on a dataset of wind farm layouts sampled from the space of all layouts, using biased random walk. These experiments were designed to discover which features lead to construction of an accurate surrogate model. According to the results of these experiments, polar coordinates (sorted according to distance) as features are selected for learning. A multilayer perceptron (MLP) neural network and a tree-based regression model (M5P) are chosen as the surrogate models to approximate the real fitness function in conjunction with an (mu, lambda) evolutionary strategy. Two previously presented BlockCopy operators are used in the evolutionary strategy. The surrogate models are managed using a modified version of the Pre-selection strategy and the Best strategy.

Our evaluation used four benchmark wind farm scenarios with dimensionality ranging from 200 to 1420 dimensions. The evaluation results show that our preliminary MLP and M5P surrogate models did not improve the optimisation results over traditional evolutionary strategies due to scalability issues. The scalability is a known weakness of many surrogate-assisted evolutionary approaches for the reason that most of them are designed for low-dimensionality problems. However, the research should continue on this topic because of its importance to renewable energy.

year: 2016

title: The Effects of a Shared Reading Intervention on the English Reading Skills of Year One Students in a Level Two Māori-medium Educational Context

authors: Te Arihi, Kylie

subjects: English Reading Skills

abstract: One of the biggest challenges confronting literacy education in Aotearoa  New Zealand is accommodating the differences in English reading-related variables at school entry to produce equitable outcomes in later reading achievement (Wilkinson, Freebody, & Elkins, 2000).  English-medium schools in Aotearoa struggle to negotiate effective literacy practices that validate and cater for the cognitive, cultural, and linguistic differences children bring to the process of learning to read in English.  Whereas, the role of English reading instruction in Māori-medium schools has been an under-researched and controversial issue.  How to accommodate for these differences to achieve equitable English reading outcomes in a year 1 level 2 Māori-medium context is the theme that this research seeks to explore.
	This Masters thesis reports on a shared reading intervention that explicitly teaches phonological awareness and alphabet knowledge to examine its effects on the English reading skills of year 1 students in a level 2 Māori-medium setting.  The research implemented a Kaupapa Māori framework and used interviews, surveys, reliable literacy measures, and research-based literacy instruction to explore reading acquisition for this particular cohort.  Thus, the purposes of the study were (a) to glean an in-depth understanding of the literacy and language practices that potentially shaped the participants English reading–related variables, (b) to examine the range of English reading-related skills for this cohort, and (c) to determine the effects of the intervention on their English reading skills.
	Eight students were divided and matched with a pair according to their reported pre-test phonemic awareness and alphabet knowledge scores, and then randomly assigned to either an intervention (n = 4) or treatment control (n = 4) group.  The intervention programme was carried out over a six week period and comprised 12, 30 minute lessons that integrated phonological and alphabetic based decoding skills within the shared reading approach.  The duration of the treatment control programme was also carried out over a six week period and comprised 12, 30 minutes lessons that integrated semantic, syntactic, and visual graphophonic sources of information to recognise words.  The results indicated the breadth and depth of English reading skills in year 1 level 2 Māori-medium contexts are diverse and the children had a positive attitude and sense of efficacy towards reading.  A comparison of the test results between the intervention and treatment control group demonstrated that a shared reading intervention that focused explicitly on phonological awareness and alphabet knowledge is effective in raising letter-naming knowledge, pseudoword decoding, phonemic awareness, and invented spelling.  The results are discussed in light of theoretical assumptions about reading acquisition that underlie word-base and text-base approaches to word recognition.
	Overall, this study supports the development and reform of training and professional development opportunities in phonological awareness and alphabet knowledge to better support, inform, and educate Aotearoa reading teachers.  This study contributes to the knowledge of English reading acquisition that validate the depth and breadth of early cognitive and linguistic differences to increase equitable English reading outcomes in level 2 Māori-medium contexts.

text: The Effects of a Shared Reading Intervention on the English Reading Skills of Year One Students in a Level Two Māori-medium Educational Context One of the biggest challenges confronting literacy education in Aotearoa  New Zealand is accommodating the differences in English reading-related variables at school entry to produce equitable outcomes in later reading achievement (Wilkinson, Freebody, & Elkins, 2000).  English-medium schools in Aotearoa struggle to negotiate effective literacy practices that validate and cater for the cognitive, cultural, and linguistic differences children bring to the process of learning to read in English.  Whereas, the role of English reading instruction in Māori-medium schools has been an under-researched and controversial issue.  How to accommodate for these differences to achieve equitable English reading outcomes in a year 1 level 2 Māori-medium context is the theme that this research seeks to explore.
	This Masters thesis reports on a shared reading intervention that explicitly teaches phonological awareness and alphabet knowledge to examine its effects on the English reading skills of year 1 students in a level 2 Māori-medium setting.  The research implemented a Kaupapa Māori framework and used interviews, surveys, reliable literacy measures, and research-based literacy instruction to explore reading acquisition for this particular cohort.  Thus, the purposes of the study were (a) to glean an in-depth understanding of the literacy and language practices that potentially shaped the participants English reading–related variables, (b) to examine the range of English reading-related skills for this cohort, and (c) to determine the effects of the intervention on their English reading skills.
	Eight students were divided and matched with a pair according to their reported pre-test phonemic awareness and alphabet knowledge scores, and then randomly assigned to either an intervention (n = 4) or treatment control (n = 4) group.  The intervention programme was carried out over a six week period and comprised 12, 30 minute lessons that integrated phonological and alphabetic based decoding skills within the shared reading approach.  The duration of the treatment control programme was also carried out over a six week period and comprised 12, 30 minutes lessons that integrated semantic, syntactic, and visual graphophonic sources of information to recognise words.  The results indicated the breadth and depth of English reading skills in year 1 level 2 Māori-medium contexts are diverse and the children had a positive attitude and sense of efficacy towards reading.  A comparison of the test results between the intervention and treatment control group demonstrated that a shared reading intervention that focused explicitly on phonological awareness and alphabet knowledge is effective in raising letter-naming knowledge, pseudoword decoding, phonemic awareness, and invented spelling.  The results are discussed in light of theoretical assumptions about reading acquisition that underlie word-base and text-base approaches to word recognition.
	Overall, this study supports the development and reform of training and professional development opportunities in phonological awareness and alphabet knowledge to better support, inform, and educate Aotearoa reading teachers.  This study contributes to the knowledge of English reading acquisition that validate the depth and breadth of early cognitive and linguistic differences to increase equitable English reading outcomes in level 2 Māori-medium contexts.

year: 2014