During the 2020 COVID-19 lockdowns, one of the primary challenges faced by mathematics educators was maintaining assessment integrity when replacing invigilated assessments with online assessments. These assessments presented students with the opportunity to engage in misconduct in a manner that ordinarily would not exist. This was particularly…

Place value is one of the 'big ideas' in number and plays a critical role in helping students develop their number sense, problem solving and computation skills. Yet, the elegant simplicity of our place value system belies the abstract nature of the construct. This paper presents data from 606 Year 3-6 students (ages 8-12) from two metropolitan…

Mathematics anxiety and examination anxiety affect student well-being, engagement, and performance in the mathematics classroom. An increase in confidence in the mathematics classroom leads to a decrease in anxiety. This paper reports on the Five Question Approach (FQA) to teaching mathematics which provides teachers with a method of reducing…

Australia participated in the eighth cycle of the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). TIMSS is an international sample study that assesses the mathematics and science achievement of Year 4 and Year 8 students every 4 years. Australia has participated in all cycles of TIMSS since it commenced in 1995 and over this 28-year…

Progressing from additive to multiplicative thinking is a key outcome of school mathematics, making ratios an essential topic of study in junior secondary. In this study, 15 Australian Year 8 students were administered a ratio test followed by semi-structured interviews to explore their conceptions of ratio prior to formal instruction. In this…

In recent years, numeracy has had an increasing focus in the Australian educational system, with policies and assessments in place for both students and teachers. In order to address the requirements of their careers, teachers need to have sufficient numeracy capabilities. In our study, we explored the numeracy capabilities of post-graduate…

It is generally understood that both clear teacher instruction and orderly classroom climates support student achievement in mathematics. However, to what extent does instructional clarity "compensate" for classroom disorder? In this exploratory study, we analyse data from 8,864 Year 8 students sampled by TIMSS 2019 to investigate the…

Objective: When students learn or solve problems, attentional resources are depleted; rest breaks may restore cognitive functioning in support of learning. Research framed by attention restoration theory holds that exposure to natural environments may be another means to restore attentional resources. The study investigated the effects of…

One of the main objectives of international large-scale assessments is to make comparisons between different countries, education policies, education systems, or subgroups. One of the main criteria for making comparisons between different groups is to ensure measurement invariance. The purpose of this study was to test the measurement invariance…

This position paper examines the phenomenon of the McNamara Fallacy to analyse flawed conceptions of "success" in mathematics learning, normalised assessment structures and their implications for mathematics education. The established presence of the McNamara Fallacy and the ramifications of this statistical fallacy provide a foundation…

The Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) is an international comparative study of student achievement directed by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA). TIMSS was first conducted in 1995 and the 2023 assessment formed the eighth cycle, providing 28 years of trends in mathematics…

Explorations of the national NAPLAN numeracy data consistently reveal a strong relationship between achievement on these tests and students' socio-economic background. A small but persistent pattern of gender difference favouring males in mean NAPLAN numeracy scores is also reported. Whether these patterns are replicated for students attending…

Students with blindness and low vision (BLV) are less likely to choose mathematics as a subject in the senior secondary years which may negatively impact future employment opportunities. Using a longitudinal qualitative methodology, three interviews were recorded with a student who is legally blind over a six-year period. Findings suggest that…

In this study, the evaluation of mathematical proficiency (MP) in one NSW Year 12 standardised exam paper was investigated. By considering the multi-strand model of MP, a literature-based criteria for scoring the assessment of MP in individual exam questions was first developed. The criteria were then applied to quantitatively evaluate the 2023…

The National Assessment Program--Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) was introduced into Australian schools in 2008. Since NAPLAN's standardised tests are now regarded as high-stakes assessment, how well students perform has now become much more important. The findings presented in this paper pertain to students' experiences of how NAPLAN has affected…