Realistic Contexts, Mathematics Assessment, and Social Class: Lessons for Assessment Policy from an English Research Programme
Realistic Contexts, Mathematics Assessment, and Social Class: Lessons for Assessment Policy from an English Research Programme
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现实背景、数学评估和社会阶层：来自英语研究项目的评估政策的教训
DOI：
10.1163/9789087909383_007
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发表时间：
2009
影响因子：
2.7
通讯作者：
T. Harries
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
B. Cooper;T. Harries
近年来，人们越来越关注社会之间和社会内部的数学比较表现。经济合作与发展组织（OECD）的国际学生评估项目（PISA）和国际数学与科学研究趋势（TIMSS）的研究结果在许多国家内就比较表现产生了巨大的争论。与此同时，在像英国这样拥有全国课程和相关的年度详尽的数学成绩测试计划的国家，关于改变“标准”和各种类型的学校对数学熟练工人的“需求”的贡献的争论不断。媒体和政治阶层的大部分辩论都没有提及评估的性质，而这些评估被用来产生这些经常激烈的讨论中所采用的结果。在国与国之间的情况下，偶尔会对测试本身提出一些批评，指出由于各国课程不同，很难制定一种跨系统公平的测试（例如Brown， 1996年）。Harlow和Jones（2004）也通过对儿童的采访表明，TIMSS中使用的一些科学项目并没有提供儿童所知道和理解的有效途径。然而，提出我们将在本章中讨论的数学测试项目是否公平，或者更严格地说，是否在特定社会中的社会群体中同样有效的问题并不常见。考虑到我们在英国的研究环境中的测试结果被用于比较具有不同社会构成的学校，以及在孩子们从小学转到中学时做出安置决定，任何社会阶级或性别的差异有效性不仅是一个技术问题，而且可能影响社会正义。在本章中，我们将使用一个特定的项目来说明社会阶层，性别和有效性之间的一些关系。我们将利用对儿童的采访，因为他们接受了这一项目的两种形式，以证明修改项目是多么容易，从而使效度与社会阶层和性别等因素产生不同的相互作用。报告的工作只是过去15年来作者和其他同事在英国开展的工作计划的一部分，在开始之前，我们将描述该计划，其目的和一些关键结论(Cooper, 1992,1994,1998a, 1998b, 2004; Cooper & Dunne, 1998；
In recent years increasing attention has been paid to comparative performance in mathematics, both across and within societies. The findings of both the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) have generated enormous debate within many countries concerning comparative performance. In parallel, in those countries such as England that have a national curriculum and an associated annual and exhaustive programme for testing mathematical achievement, there is a continuous debate about changing “standards” and the contribution of various types of schools to the “need” for mathematically skilled workers. Much of this debate in the media and the political classes takes place without reference to the nature of the assessment that has been used to produce the results employed in these often heated discussions. In the between-countries context, some occasional critical reference is made to the tests themselves, noting the difficulty of producing a test that is fair across systems, given differing national curricula (eg Brown, 1996). Harlow and Jones (2004) have also shown, by interviewing children, that some science items used in TIMSS do not provide valid access to what children know and understand. However, it is less common to raise the issue we will address in this chapter of whether test items in mathematics are fair or, more strictly, equally valid across social groups within a particular society. Given that the results of tests within our research setting, England, are used to compare schools with differing social compositions as well as to make placement decisions as children, for example, move from primary to secondary schools, any differential validity by social class or gender becomes not just a technical matter but also one that might impact on social justice. In this chapter, we will employ one particular item to illustrate some relations between social class, gender and validity. We will draw on interviews with children as they undertake two forms of this item in order to demonstrate how easy it is to modify items so that validity interacts differently with such factors as social class and gender. The work reported forms just one part of a programme of work carried out in England by the authors and other colleagues over the past 15 years and, to begin, we will describe this programme, its purpose and some of its key conclusions (Cooper, 1992, 1994, 1998a, 1998b, 2004; Cooper & Dunne, 1998,