The role of images and image-text relations in group 'Basic Skills Tests' of literacy for children in the primary school years

Abstract

The 'Basic Skills Tests' in literacy are undertaken by all students in Years 3 (about 8 years of age) and 5 (about 10 years of age) in New South Wales government schools and by many students in schools in the non-government education systems. The stimulus magazines upon which the multiple-choice questions in these tests are based contain many images and a range of different types of texts. This paper reports an investigation into the kinds of images that occur in the test materials and the extent to which these images are explicitly targeted by the test questions, as well as the extent to which questions that do not target images can nevertheless be answered by accessing information from the images.