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Assessments accompanying published textbooks: the extent to which mathematical processes are evident

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Abstract

Assessments accompanying published textbooks are often used by teachers in the USA as a primary means to evaluate students’ mathematical knowledge. In addition to assessing content knowledge, assessments should provide insight into students’ ability to engage with mathematical processes such as reasoning, communication, connections, and representations. We report here an analysis of the extent to which the assessments accompanying published textbooks in the USA at the elementary, middle grades, and high school levels provide opportunities for students to engage with these mathematical processes. Results indicate that in elementary grades, communication, connections, and graphics are not consistently emphasized across grade levels and publishers. In middle grades, students are rarely asked to record their reasoning or translate among representational forms of a concept. In high school geometry, students are given many opportunities to interpret and create graphics, but the same is not true for algebra. With the exception of connections, the results suggest that inconsistent emphasis is placed on the mathematical processes within assessments accompanying commercial textbooks in the USA.

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Notes

  1. The research reported here extends earlier work by a subset of this paper’s authors in which assessments accompanying published elementary textbooks were analyzed (Hunsader, Thompson, & Zorin, 2013).

  2. Although students often explore basic concepts of algebra in the elementary and middle grades, for many students the first formal study of algebra occurs in grade 8 of middle school or in high school. Geometry is typically taught as a separate course after the first course in algebra and is followed by a second course in algebra that focuses on functions in preparation for the study of calculus. Because we are interested in the assessments accompanying published textbooks, without regard to classroom instruction, we refer to the textbook used for algebra and geometry rather than the course.

  3. We use chapter/unit test to indicate the test that classroom teachers typically give at the end of each major unit of study, often at intervals of 2–3 weeks.

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Acknowledgments

We gratefully acknowledge the assistance in coding by researchers Suzanne Hedberg and Sarah vanIngen.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of South Florida, Sarasota-Manatee, Sarasota, USA

    Patricia D. Hunsader

  2. University of South Florida, Tampa, USA

    Denisse R. Thompson, Amanda Loyden Mohn, Jennifer Zakrzewski, Ilyas Karadeniz, Elaine C. Fisher & George MacDonald

  3. University of South Florida, St. Petersburg, USA

    Barbara Zorin

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  1. Patricia D. Hunsader
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  2. Denisse R. Thompson
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  4. Amanda Loyden Mohn
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  7. Elaine C. Fisher
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  8. George MacDonald
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Correspondence to Patricia D. Hunsader.

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Hunsader, P.D., Thompson, D.R., Zorin, B. et al. Assessments accompanying published textbooks: the extent to which mathematical processes are evident. ZDM Mathematics Education 46, 797–813 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11858-014-0570-6

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