Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER)

The Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) is a national, independent, not for profit educational research organisation with a mission to create and promote research-based knowledge, products and services that can be used to improve learning across the lifespan.

ACER was founded in Melbourne in 1930 as the first educational body in Australia with a nation-wide interest. It was established through a grant from the Carnegie Corporation, an American philanthropic foundation that undertook a range of initiatives in Australia that impacted the educational and cultural sectors, including universities, libraries, galleries and museums.

The Carnegie Corporation was established with the vast wealth of Scottish steel magnate Andrew Carnegie in 1911 to promote the advancement and diffusion of knowledge and understanding among the people of the United States as well as those of Canada, Australia and other British Colonies. The Corporation began investigating how it might support Australian education efforts in the mid-1920s. In 1928 it sent education specialist James Russell to Australia to make an assessment of need. Russell, who had developed the Columbia University the Teachers College into a leading training and research institution, recommended the establishment of an Australian educational research bureau. The bureau would come to fruition as ACER.

In February 1930, ACER held its first meeting, adopting a formal constitution and establishing a set of key objectives that have remained largely relevant to the organisation over more than nine decades of operation. These included: the conduct of educational research and development, supporting others in their research and development efforts through cooperation and financial assistance, publishing and promoting educational research results, and supporting the development of a skilled educational research workforce.

Through the 1930s ACER helped consolidate educational research in Australia, built the foundations for a domestic education research profession and established itself as a central clearinghouse for educational information. Through these early years ACER conducted and supported research on correspondence education, and primary, post-primary and rural schooling. It also began work on the construction, adaptation, and distribution of standard academic and psychological tests.

During the second world war, the Commonwealth Government called upon ACER's expertise in testing, asking the organisation to develop intelligence and skills tests for use with the armed forces, government departments, and other bodies involved in the war effort. Since the war, testing has been an important part of the organisation's ongoing activity and income (the Test Division was formally established in the late 1940s). ACER's contribution to the war effort also aided it in securing ongoing core funding from the Commonwealth and the States (achieved in 1946). It had been pushing for such funding since its grant from the Carnegie Corporation ended in 1939.

Core government funding for ACER's research and development activities remained in place until 2002, with the organisation also deriving income from testing, as well as an expanded array of consultation and professional development services. Adding to its strong reputation for testing, ACER emerged as an expert in evaluation as that field began to take shape in the 1960s. Since the early 1970s, policy and program evaluation has constituted an important part of the organisation's activity.

While ACER's valuable contribution to Australian educational research is clear, one criticism has been its focus on testing and evaluation rather than educational innovation. In summarising ACER's first 50 years in 1980, ACER historian WF Connell noted that the organisation had, tended to play safe, to supply the tests and services of the kind that were wanted by educational authorities, and to survey and evaluate existing situations in education rather than move to create new ones. It was on the side of progress, but the advance was not likely to be a bold one [Connell, 1980 p.330]. In the mid-1980s one of the bolder programs that ACER did undertake involved exploring the potential for computers to substantially change learning and teaching processes.

Following consultation with government and other stakeholders, Education and Technology was identified as one of five research themes that ACER would investigate from 1987 to 1990. Although some schools had managed to engage in a limited way with computing during the 1970s, it was in the early 1980s that school computing really started to take shape in Australia. It is perhaps no surprise then, that by the mid-1980s ACER would be tasked with evaluating its impact.

ACER appointed Liddy Nevile to head up the Education and Technology theme with a brief to evaluate the impact of computers in schools. But, Nevile successfully argued that a formal evaluation of the current computer use would not give a fair account of what it might be possible to achieve with computers in the right educational environment and might actually close down opportunities for innovation in learning and teaching. Inspired and informed by work being undertaken by Seymour Papert and a group of educationalists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Nevile reframed ACER's Education and Technology theme as exploratory rather than evaluative. One of the key vehicles through which this exploration took place was a 'school of the future', known as the Sunrise School, which ACER established at the Museum of Victoria. The Sunrise Collection at Melbourne Museum contains a range of items related to this Sunrise School program.

References

ACER (2024) ACER: About Us. https://www.acer.org/au/about-us. Australian Council for Educational Research. (accessed 14.2.24)

ACER (1981). Annual Report 1980-81. Australian Council for Educational Research.

ACER (1984). Annual Report 1983-84. Australian Council for Educational Research.

ACER (1986). Annual Report 1985-86. Australian Council for Educational Research.

ACER (1990). Annual Report 1989-90. Australian Council for Educational Research

ACER (1987) Newsletter No. 59, Autumn 1987. Australian Council for Educational Research.

Anderson J. (1984). Computing in Schools: An Australian perspective. Australian Council for Educational Research.

Connell W. F. (1980). The Australian Council for Educational Research 1930-80. Australian Council for Educational Research.

Nevile L. (1991). Sunrise. Australian Council for Educational Research (Unpublished).