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

我提出三个阶段的研究，旨在解决三个主要的研究问题。本文的目的是改进和扩展Mullis等人的编码方法，将其应用于英国学生现有的表现数据，并评估对这些测试项目的语言修改是否能提高阅读能力较弱的学生的表现。Phase 2主要研究问题2，Phase 3主要研究问题3。这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，旨在通过识别编码结果与学生实际理解困难不一致的案例，找出Mullis等人编码方法的潜在弱点，并找出原因。这将包括向儿童展示各种TIMSS 2011测试项目，并使用认知访谈方法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哪一个问的是和原来的问题相同的问题。访谈将采用与martinello（2008）类似的形式进行，但预计会更短，每次访谈约为15-20分钟，而不是60-90分钟。我打算招募大约40名儿童，不到马丁尼洛使用人数的两倍；考虑到会话长度的差异，40次认知访谈是可行的。第二阶段需要使用国家学生数据库来探索英国2015年TIMSS队列的项目水平表现。这些学生是2016年参加第一轮新KS2评估的学生，本分析旨在评估KS2阅读的表现对KS2和TIMSS数学测试项目的表现有多大影响。我将探讨这种关系是如何被项目的阅读需求所调节的。根据以往的研究结果，我们假设在阅读评估中表现较差的学生在TIMSS和KS2的高阅读要求数学测试项目上的成功程度低于学生，而在低阅读要求项目上的表现差距则较小。项目将根据基于Mullis等人的新开发的分类方案进行分类，但纳入了第一阶段的发现和更广泛的文献综述。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水平测试。选择的测试项目将包括KS2和TIMSS最近的原始和修改版本，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能力的判断进行比较，理想情况下，还将与历史数据进行比较，比如他们的小学一年级阅读成绩。修改后的问题将试图减少先前在第二阶段确定的对学生阅读能力影响最大的项目的阅读需求。数据将以班级水平收集（即像班级测试一样进行），持续40分钟，与KS2推理试卷相同。这些假设很可能从二次分析的发现中出现，尽管它再次怀疑较弱的读者在高阅读要求的项目上表现得特别差。希望在高阅读需求项目的修改版本上，缩小强弱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.