Showing papers by "Kaye Stacey published in 2014"

Item Context Factors Affecting Students' Performance on Mathematics Items.

Abstract: This paper reports how the context in which a mathematics item is embedded impacts on students’ performance. The performance of Year 10 students on four PISA items was compared with performance on variants with more familiar contexts. Performance was not better when they solved items with more familiar contexts but there was some evidence that items requiring the second-order use of context were more influenced by an alteration of context than items of first-order use. Recommendations for further study are included.

Gardner's two children problems and variations: Puzzles with conditional probability and sample spaces

Abstract: For 26 years Martin Gardner wrote a famous and very widely read mathematical puzzle column in the magazine Scientific American. In 1959, he published what he called The Two Children Problem, which presented two questions like this.

Using Percentages to Describe and Calculate Change

Abstract: This study reports on the use of formative, diagnostic online assessments for the topic percentages. Two new item formats (drag-drop and slider) are described. About one-third of the school students (Years 7 to 9) could, using a slider, estimate “80% more than” a given length, in contrast with over two-thirds who could estimate “90% of” a given length. While four-fifths of the school students could, using drag-drop cards, choose the 2-step calculation of a reduced price after a 35% discount, only one-third could choose the corresponding 1step calculation.