The moderating role of reading proficiency in pupils' performance on national and international assessments of primary mathematics

我提出了三个研究阶段，旨在解决三个主要的研究问题。本文的目的是改进和推广穆利斯等人的S编码方法，将其应用于英国小学生现有的成绩数据，并评估对这些测试项目的语言修改是否会改善阅读能力较弱的学生的表现。第二阶段侧重于研究问题2，而第三阶段侧重于问题3。所有三个阶段都针对研究问题1。阶段1结合更广泛的文献综述，旨在找出穆利斯等人S编码方法的潜在弱点，找出他们的编码结果与学生实际理解困难不一致的情况，并找出原因。这将包括向孩子们展示各种TIMSS 2011测试项目，并使用认知访谈的方法来讨论他们对问题的解释。孩子们可能会被要求用他们自己的话重新表述问题，讨论他们解决问题的方法，或者从一组给定的问题中找出哪一个问题与原来的问题相同。采访将采用与Martiniello(2008年)类似的形式，但预计将更短，每节课约15-20分钟，而不是60-90分钟。我打算招募大约40名儿童，不到Martiniello使用的人数的两倍；考虑到课程时长的差异，40名儿童是进行认知面试的可行数量。第二阶段需要使用国家学生数据库来探索英格兰TIMSS 2015队列的项目级表现。这些学生是参加了2016年新一轮KS2评估的学生之一，这项分析旨在评估KS2阅读成绩对KS2和TIMSS数学考试项目的影响程度。我将探索这种关系是如何被这篇文章的阅读需求所调节的。根据先前的研究结果，假设在阅读评估中表现较差的学生在TIMSS和KS2评估中的高阅读需求数学测试项目上的成绩将低于学生，而在低阅读需求项目上的表现差距将较小。项目将根据新开发的分类方案进行分类，该方案基于Mullis等人的分类方案，但纳入了第一阶段的发现和更广泛的文献回顾。在第三阶段，大约400名5年级和6年级的学生将参加班级数学测试。选择的试题将包括最近KS2和TIMSS问题的原始版本和修改版本，这些问题具有不同的数学和阅读要求。然后，学生在这些测试项目上的表现将与教师对阅读水平的判断进行比较，理想情况下，还将与历史数据进行比较，例如他们的KS1阅读表现。修改后的问题将试图减少以前在第二阶段中被认为在学生阅读水平方面表现差异最大的项目的阅读需求。数据将作为班级收集(即像班级测试一样进行)，最后40分钟，与KS2推理试卷相同。这些假设很可能会从第二次分析的结果中浮现出来，尽管人们再次怀疑，较弱的读者在高阅读需求项目上的表现会特别差。希望在高阅读需求项目的修改版本上缩小强势和弱势读者之间的性能差距。

I propose three phases of research aimed at addressing three main research questions. The intentions here are to improve and extend Mullis et al.'s coding approach, apply this to existing performance data for pupils in England, and assess whether language modifications to these test-items improves the performance of pupils with weaker reading skills. Phase 2 focuses on research question 2, while Phase 3 focuses on question 3. All three phases address research question 1.Phase 1, in combination with a wider literature review, aims to identify potential weaknesses in Mullis et al.'s coding approach, by identifying cases in which the outcome of their coding is incongruent with pupils' actual comprehension difficulties, and identifying why this is the case. This will involve presenting children with a variety of TIMSS 2011 test-items, and using a cognitive interview approach to discuss their interpretation of the question. The child might be asked to rephrase the question in their own words, discuss their method for tackling the question, or identify which of a given set of questions asks the same question as the original. The interviews will be conducted in a format similar to that used by Martiniello (2008), though are anticipated to be shorter, at approximately 15-20 minutes per session, rather than 60-90 minutes. I intend to recruit approximately 40 children, just less than double the number used by Martiniello; given the difference in session length, 40 is a feasible number of cognitive interviews to conduct.Phase 2 requires the use of the National Pupil Database to explore item-level performance of England's TIMSS 2015 cohort. These students were among those who sat the first wave of the new KS2assessments in 2016, and this analysis aims to evaluate how strongly performance in KS2 reading moderates performance on both KS2 and TIMSS mathematics test-items. I will explore how this relationship is moderated by the item's reading demands. In accordance with the findings of previous research, it is hypothesised that pupils with lower performance in the reading assessments will have had less success on high reading demand mathematics test-items in both the TIMSS and KS2 assessments than pupils, whereas the performance gap will be smaller on low-reading demand items. Items will be classified according to a newly developed categorisation scheme based on that by Mullis et al., but incorporating the findings from Phase 1 and the wider literature review.In Phase 3, approximately 400 pupils in Years 5 and 6 will take part in a class level test of mathematics. The test-items that are chosen will include both original and modified versions of recent KS2 and TIMSS questions with varying mathematical and reading demands. Pupils' performance on these test-items would then be compared to teacher judgements of reading proficiency, as well as, ideally, historical data such as their KS1 reading performance. Modified questions will attempt to reduce the reading demands of items previously identified in Phase 2 as having had the largest variation in performance by pupil reading proficiency. The data would be collected as a class level (i.e. conducted like a class test), and last 40 minutes, the same as a KS2 reasoning paper. Hypotheses for these are likely to emerge from the findings of the secondary analysis, though it is again suspected that weaker readers will perform particularly poorly on high reading-demand items. It is hoped that the performance gap between stronger and weaker readers will be reduced on modified versions of high reading-demand items.