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Assessing National Curriculum Mathematics in England: Exploring Children's Interpretation of Key Stage 2 Tests in Clinical Interviews

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Abstract

This paper initially discusses recent changes in mathematics education and assessment in England and Wales against the background of research on mathematics performance and assessment. It then reports findings from qualitative research with 10–11 year olds undertaken with the object of exploring the validity of the pilot pencil and paper tests in mathematics developed as part of the assessment programme for the English and Welsh National Curriculum in 1993 and 1994. Fifteen children from across the 'ability' range were asked to work through a selection of items in the situation of an individual clinical interview. This enabled in-depth data to be collected about their interpretation of and performance on the items. This paper focuses in particular on items where the ambiguity of the boundary between everyday knowledge and mathematics might be expected to lead to problems for children in interpreting the tasks required of them by the test items. The results show that the nature of the items might well have prevented some of these children, in the context of a paper and pencil testing situation, from demonstrating mathematical capacities and understandings they seem to have possessed. Their initial performance does not always seem to have reflected their underlying competence as demonstrated in the extended interview.

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  1. University of Sussex Institute of Education, University of Sussex, Falmer, East Sussex, BN1 9RG, UK e-mail

    Barry Cooper

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Cooper, B. Assessing National Curriculum Mathematics in England: Exploring Children's Interpretation of Key Stage 2 Tests in Clinical Interviews. Educational Studies in Mathematics 35, 19–49 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1002945216595

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