Austin ISD is one of 21 US urban school districts participating in the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) Trial Urban District Assessment (TUDA). AISD students consistently perform well on the 4th and 8th grade reading and math assessments. This research brief summarizes 2015 results. A separate supplemental report also was…

Presently, a plethora of instruments designed to assess a mathematical skill, disposition, or competence prevail in South Africa. Yet few of them adhere to the basic requirements of the unidimensionality and invariance of measures. The Marko-D is a mathematical instrument designed to test learners between the ages of 4 and 8. The instrument, thus…

Concern has been expressed that many commencing undergraduate mathematics students have mastered skills without conceptual understanding. A pilot study carried out at a leading Australian university indicates that a significant number of students, with high tertiary entrance ranks, have very limited understanding of the concept of function,…

The National Senior Certificate (NSC) examinations were written for the second time in 2009 amid much criticism. In this study, scripts of candidates who wrote the NSC Mathematics examinations (papers 1 and 2) in 2009 were used as data to analyse the marks scored and then polytomous Rasch analysis was conducted for all the sub-questions to…

The standard error of equating quantifies the variability in the estimation of an equating function. Because common items for deriving equated scores are treated as fixed, the only source of variability typically considered arises from the estimation of common-item parameters from responses of samples of examinees. Use of alternative, equally…

In this study, the probability unit ability levels of the eleventh grade Turkish students were classified through cluster analysis. The study was carried out in a high school located in Trabzon, Turkey during the fall semester of the 2011-2012 academic years. A total of 84 eleventh grade students participated. Students were taught about…

In order to determine which test is more appropriate to administer to elementary grade students, it is important to consider the purpose of the test in conjunction with the ability and grade level of the students. Northwest Evaluation Association™ (NWEA™) designed Measures of Academic Progress® (MAP®) tests mindful of the amount of learning that…

In this study we set out to investigate the errors made by students in logarithms. A test with 16 items was administered to 89 Secondary three students (Year 9). The errors made by the students were categorized using four categories from a framework by Movshovitz-Hadar, Zaslavsky, and Inbar (1987). It was found that students in the top third were…

To sort pupils at the end of primary school, some early-tracking systems apply a mechanism that unwittingly divides classes into two groups: students preparing for exams to enter better schools and everyone else, who decide not to compete for selective schools. Utilizing TIMSS data and a follow-up study in the Czech Republic, we show that this…

To measure the impact of fine arts instruction in HISD [Houston Independent School District] , the study compared the STAAR [State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness] performance, attendance, and disciplinary outcomes of fine arts students enrolled in Fine Arts Magnet schools (treatment group) with students enrolled in non-Fine Arts Magnet…

This dissertation explores how country-level cultural values are associated with gender differences in the enrollment in and completion of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC), national achievement in mathematics and science, and students' science achievement. Study 1 explored how gender-equal…

Online tests have been identified as a core learning activity in higher education. Unlike conventional online tests, which cannot completely reflect students' learning status, two-tier tests not only consider students' answers, but also take into account reasons for their answers. Due to such significance, research into the two-tier tests had…

In this research, we considered the different impact two methods of teaching had on pupils' ability to solve complex math problems. The methods considered were: self-regulated study and traditional teaching. We also examined the pedagogical consequences the differences made among the population of pupils with learning disabilities in special…

This is a quasi-experimental study that explored the effects of reflective learning on prospective teachers' conceptual understanding, critical thinking, problem solving, and mathematical communication skills and the relationship of these variables. It involved 60 prospective teachers from two basic mathematics classes of an institution of higher…

The purpose of mathematics competitions, and in our case the South African Mathematics Olympiad (SAMO), is to promote problem solving skills and strategies, to generate interest and enthusiasm for mathematics and to identify the most talented mathematical minds. SAMO is organised in two divisions--a junior and a senior division--over three rounds.…