In England, GCSE (General Certificate of Secondary Education) qualifications offered to students aged 14-16 were recently reformed. For mathematics specifically, the new GCSE aimed to be more demanding, provide greater challenge for the most able students, and support progression to post-16 mathematics. However, there have been concerns that the…

Predicting student performance in international large-scale assessments (ILSAs) is crucial for understanding educational outcomes on a global scale. ILSAs, such as the Program for International Student Assessment and the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, serve as vital tools for policymakers, educators, and researchers to…

The present study falls into the efforts to improve practices for addressing errors produced by learners in various situations involving the calculation of integrals. We attempt to clarify as precisely as possible the types of errors that secondary school students produce when using integrals in algebraic and graphical frames. Based on the…

This study aimed to evaluate the item model fit by equating the forms of the PISA 2018 mathematics subtest with concurrent common items equating in samples from Türkiye, the UK, and Italy. The answers given in mathematics subtest Forms 2, 8, and 12 were used in this context. Analyzes were performed using the Dichotomous Rasch Model in the WINSTEPS…

The purpose of this research is to determine whether PISA 2018 mathematical literacy test items show a differential item functioning across countries. For this purpose, only the items in booklet number three were examined using the MIMIC method with Latent Class Analysis (LCA) approach. PISA 2018 tests are mostly developed in English. Therefore,…

Since its introduction in 2017, NFER has been contracted by Ofqual to develop, deliver and analyse the results of the National Reference Test (NRT) in English and Maths. The NRT is administered annually and shows if student performance in English and maths at GCSE level has changed from year-to-year. This year, more than 13,000 Year 11 students…

Big Ideas can be seen as overarching concepts that occur in various mathematical topics and strands within a syllabus. Within our project on Big Ideas in School Mathematics, we developed instruments to measure two Big Ideas: Equivalence and Proportionality. The instruments we developed seek to assess students' ability to see these Big Ideas as…

When learning about fractions, teaching usually follows certain topics -- e.g. part of the whole, fraction equivalence, and size comparison. Not yet answered is whether students' conceptual and procedural knowledge of fractions is coherent between those topics. To answer this question, we performed a latent profile analysis of data from N = 1005…

This research aims to describe students' level of algebraic reasoning based on the adversity quotient types of climber, camper, and quitter in solving PISA model mathematics problems. This research is descriptive research with a qualitative approach. The research began by administering a questionnaire to determine the student's adversity quotient…

This study investigated the reliability and validity of the Abbreviated Math Anxiety Scale (AMAS; Hopko, Bare, & Hunt, 2003) and the Math Anxiety Scale -- Revised (MAS-R; Bai, 2009) across race and gender as well as the extent to which race and gender predict learning math anxiety and math evaluation anxiety at both the secondary level, which…

Over the last 20 years, many methods have been proposed to use process data (e.g., response time) to detect changes in engagement during the test-taking process. However, many of these methods were developed and evaluated in highly similar testing contexts: 30 or more single-select multiple-choice items presented in a linear, fixed sequence in…

The aim of this study is to examine the effects of Realistic Mathematics Education (RME) on 7th grade students' achievement on integer operations and their attitudes towards mathematics and to determine students' views about the RME approach. The research was carried out with the participation of 11 students. Exploratory sequential mixed design…

Globally girls' performance in mathematics has improved over the years as measured by TIMSS results. Inconsistency in mathematics performance of boys and girls is still an area of great concern. This study examines the relationship between mathematics achievement and gender of South African Grade 9 learners from TIMSS 2015 data. The data were…

Since its introduction in 2017, NFER has been contracted by Ofqual to develop, deliver and analyse the results of the National Reference Test (NRT) in English and maths. The NRT is administered annually and shows if student performance in English and maths at GCSE level has changed from year-to-year. This year, more than 13,000 Year 11 students…

U.S. public schools are engaged in an unprecedented effort to expand tutoring in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Broad-based support for scaling tutoring emerged, in part, because of the large effects on student achievement found in prior meta-analyses. We conduct an expanded meta-analysis of 265 randomized controlled trials and explore how…