New approaches for measuring and comparing numeracy education outcomes across countries

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

To realize the aim of UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4, to “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all”, rigorous, reliable and responsive methods are needed to track and contextualize progress towards improved numeracy learning in the foundational years. It is especially important that these methods be adaptable across multiple contexts and languages, so that education systems can learn from those countries with improved performance, and can sound the alarm when their students are falling behind.
This panel brings together experts in applied numeracy education research to present three recently developed and complementary approaches to measuring and contextualizing the teaching and learning of mathematics. The instruments and processes presented are the latest iteration of on-going processes of use, reflection, and improvement. These instruments and approaches have all been designed to be used in multiple contexts.
The first presenter will share the methodology and the processes for developing, piloting, and validating the Sepedi version of the MARKO D student numeracy assessment instrument and the way in which the validation of the instruments used in the original design of the evaluation was carried out.

The second presentation will focus on mathematics benchmarking in two countries using the final policy linking method. It presents the background and processes through which policy linking workshops were held in two countries. Results presented will include overall benchmarks, location statistics, impact data, standard errors of the benchmarks, and inter- and intra-rater reliability.

The third presentation will focus primarily on a quantitative classroom observation and student cognitive interview instrument developed for studying effective numeracy teaching and learning at scale, including the theoretical foundations of the instruments and the processes for developing, piloting, and adapting them for different country and program contexts.

This panel contributes to the field of numeracy education by innovating and improving upon instruments and methods that enable researchers and practitioners to gain a deeper understanding of teacher practice and student outcomes in numeracy, through comparative and rigorous approaches. This panel advances the CIES 2023 conference theme by sharing tools for examining numeracy instruction and outcomes across education systems and countries, thus enabling these systems to learn from one another and to contextualize their own progress and barriers to high-quality numeracy teaching and learning through rigorous and responsive methods.

Sub Unit

• Global Mathematics Education SIG

Chair

• Leanne Ketterlin Geller, Southern Methodist University

Individual Presentations

• Evaluating learner mathematics outcomes in an RCT in South Africa - Ingrid Marta Sapire, School of Education, Wits University

• Mathematics Benchmarking using Policy Linking for SDG 4.1.1 Reporting - Jeff Davis, American Institutes for Research

• Developing school-level instruments for better understanding effective numeracy instruction at scale - Yasmin Sitabkhan, RTI International; Wendi Ralaingita, RTI International

Discussant

• Leanne Ketterlin Geller, Southern Methodist University