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

我提出了三个阶段的研究，旨在解决三个主要的研究问题。这里的意图是改进和扩展Mullis等人。的编码方法，适用于现有的性能数据的小学生在英格兰，并评估是否语言修改这些测试项目提高性能较弱的学生阅读技能。第二阶段侧重于研究问题2，而第三阶段侧重于问题3。所有三个阶段都解决了研究问题1。第一阶段，结合更广泛的文献综述，旨在确定Mullis等人的潜在弱点。的编码方法，通过识别的情况下，他们的编码的结果是不一致的，与学生的实际理解困难，并确定为什么会这样。这将涉及到向孩子们展示各种TIMSS 2011测试项目，并使用认知访谈方法来讨论他们对问题的解释。孩子们可能会被要求用自己的话重新表达这个问题，讨论他们解决这个问题的方法，或者确定一组给定的问题中的哪一个提出了与原始问题相同的问题。访谈将采用与Martiniello（2008年）类似的形式进行，但预计会更短，每次约15-20分钟，而不是60-90分钟。我打算招募大约40名儿童，比Martiniello使用的人数少一倍;考虑到会话长度的差异，40是一个可行的认知访谈数量。第二阶段需要使用国家学生数据库来探索英格兰TIMSS 2015队列的项目水平表现。这些学生是2016年参加第一波新KS 2评估的学生之一，这项分析旨在评估KS 2阅读的表现对KS 2和TIMSS数学测试项目的表现有多强。我将探讨这种关系是如何通过项目的阅读需求来调节的。根据以往的研究结果，我们假设，在阅读评估中表现较低的学生在TIMSS和KS 2评估中的高阅读要求数学测试项目上的成功率低于学生，而在低阅读要求项目上的表现差距较小。项目将根据一个新开发的分类方案进行分类，该方案是基于Mullis等人的分类方案，但结合了第一阶段的研究结果和更广泛的文献综述。在第三阶段，大约400名五年级和六年级的学生将参加班级水平的数学测试。选择的测试项目将包括最近KS 2和TIMSS问题的原始和修改版本，具有不同的数学和阅读要求。学生在这些测试项目上的表现将与教师对阅读熟练程度的判断进行比较，理想情况下，还可以与历史数据进行比较，如他们的KS 1阅读表现。修改后的问题将试图减少先前在第2阶段中确定的项目的阅读需求，因为这些项目在学生阅读熟练度方面的表现变化最大。这些数据将被收集为班级水平（即像班级测试一样进行），并持续40分钟，与KS 2推理论文相同。这些假设可能会出现在二次分析的结果中，尽管再次怀疑较弱的读者在高阅读需求项目上的表现特别差。希望在高阅读需求项目的修改版本上，能缩小较强和较弱阅读者之间的成绩差距。

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.