Third-Grade Math Test at the Provincial Level in China and Canada: Differences and Implications

• In Event: 41.021 - Approaches to Cross-Cultural Reciprocal Learning Between Mathematics Educators: Collaborations Between Districts, Schools, and Teachers

Abstract

In most countries around the world, math tests at the national or provincial level is often regarded as high-stake tests. Research shows that high-stake tests are more likely to cause students test anxiety, which have a great impact on students’ physical and mental health (Nyroos, Korhonen, & Peng, et al., 2015). Meanwhile, high-stake tests in every country are constantly changing with time in its content and forms, which are reflections of requirements of students’ mathemtical ability in its own country.
The Reciprocal Learning Project between Canada and China explores the teaching and learning in these two countries from a variety of perspectives and subject areas. This presentation emerged from the mathematics education subteam and their focus on better understanding the teaching and learning of mathematics in the two countries. This study aims to compare the content and form including amount, scoring, and the degree of difficulty of items in Chinese and Canadian third-grade math tests at the provincial level selected from Yuzhong district of ChongQing in China in 2015, and Ontario, in Canada in 2015, so as to explore the advantages and disadvantages of high-stake tests in both China and Canada.
There are four major findings. The first finding is that the important mathematical content are covered comprehensively in the two countries, namely, the key points in math textbooks are included in the tests. The second major finding is that there is a huge gap in the difficulty level. TheCanadian test is much easier than the Chinese test. The third finding is that there are more mathematics questions in the Chinese test. For example, three are 64 sub-items on the Chinese test and only 36 sub-items on the Canada test. The fourth finding is that there is a big difference in the representation of the mathematical tasks and the use of computational tools. For instance, in the Chinese test, only three mathematical tasks out of 64 are represented in a visual way with diagrams or pictures, accounting for 4.69% of the questions. However, in the Canadian, 22 out of 36 questions are represented in either diagrams or pictures, accounting for 61.11%.
We conclude that there are too many questions on the Chinese test, and we argue it may lead students’ math test anxiety and hinder students creative ability. Meanwhile, we suggest that the degree of difficulty level in the Canadian test could be enhanced.
Significance
We suggest that investigations of large-scale tests between and among countries are helpful to identify key mathematical philosophies in different countries and to determine the degree to which math anxiety is enhanced or downplayed based on the tests. It is also important to explore what topics and mathematical tasks are considered to be essential to the mathematics curriculum of other countries. In this way, we can enhance our understanding of mathematics content and, in future studies, explore textbooks that support teacher and student learning.

Authors

• Tingting Wang, SouthWest University

• Aihui Peng, Southwest University