Test anxiety amongst Science access students is often not given the due attention that it deserve... more Test anxiety amongst Science access students is often not given the due attention that it deserves and this can be a potentially leading factor of success or failure amongst Science access students as they prepare for entrance to read for a degree. The current study focuses on cognitive test anxiety which refers to the worry filled thoughts a student encounters during or after an assessment with regards to their performance on that assessment. Data was collected using the Cognitive Test Anxiety (CTA) questionnaire (and analyzed using an index based on the median that classified the students as high or low anxiety groups. Current literature suggests that there are a number of different variables associated with cognitive test anxiety. Via a logistic regression model, a relationship between student's cognitive test anxiety and five variables (gender, matric points, matric mathematics mark, lecture group and number of modules passed by students in their midyear university examinations) was investigated. With respect to the CTA of Science access students, the variables matric mathematics mark and matric points were found to be the influential variables.
Learning or performance gains are often measured in improvements of test scores over time. Howeve... more Learning or performance gains are often measured in improvements of test scores over time. However, learners may also answer questions incorrectly which they appeared to master previously, making claims about overall learning gains problematic. Using data from 1,211 grade 6 learners in the Umgungundlovu district in KwaZulu-Natal, we interrogated the consistency of the improvement of their test scores after a year in grade 6. The learners had completed the same 40 question multiple choice test at the onset and the end of grade 6, with no interventions only normal schooling in-between. The content of the test was grade 5 and 6 mathematical content. We know from previous research that the learners were not randomly guessing, yet we found that on average, the learners only got 6 out of 40 questions correct on both test 1 and test 2, did worse on 5 questions and better on 6. Further, almost half the learners both improved on 5 or more questions and declined on 5 or more questions. On 35 questions, more than half the learners changed their answers between the two tests. In other words, their performance is very ‘unstable’. This indicates that learners are not consistent in their thinking, possibly reflecting guessing, albeit not random. Furthermore, the findings point to a methodological issue of making claims about average performance gains, as these may disguise very unstable learner performance. Such claims should therefore be interrogated before they are applied in making statements about links between learning and teaching or other background factors.
Language is a recognised factor in the performance and learning of South African learners, the ma... more Language is a recognised factor in the performance and learning of South African learners, the majority of whom are schooled in a language other than their mother tongue. In this paper, we interrogate grade 6 learners’ answers to 40 questions across the mathematics curriculum qualitatively. Learners from a stratified random sample of public schools in the Umgungundlovu district in KwaZulu-Natal were given a questionnaire on their personal circumstances and a test on mathematical knowledge, mostly from the grade 5 curriculum. They wrote the test at the beginning of grade 6 school year. A quantitative analysis of the results indicated that English home language learners can be expected to score 14.5 percentage points higher on the learner maths test than non-English home language learners, after socio-economic status has been accounted for. However, correlating the difficulty of the question formulation with learner performance did not show any significant correlations. In order to understand further how language, learning and test performance relate, we analysed all learner responses, correct and incorrect, where there was a substantial difference in how favoured they were by English and non- English speaking learners. We found that learners with a home language other than English made more mistakes in interpreting the questions as well as displayed more “misconceptions”.
Test anxiety amongst Science access students is often not given the due attention that it deserve... more Test anxiety amongst Science access students is often not given the due attention that it deserves and this can be a potentially leading factor of success or failure amongst Science access students as they prepare for entrance to read for a degree. The current study focuses on cognitive test anxiety which refers to the worry filled thoughts a student encounters during or after an assessment with regards to their performance on that assessment. Data was collected using the Cognitive Test Anxiety (CTA) questionnaire (and analyzed using an index based on the median that classified the students as high or low anxiety groups. Current literature suggests that there are a number of different variables associated with cognitive test anxiety. Via a logistic regression model, a relationship between student's cognitive test anxiety and five variables (gender, matric points, matric mathematics mark, lecture group and number of modules passed by students in their midyear university examinations) was investigated. With respect to the CTA of Science access students, the variables matric mathematics mark and matric points were found to be the influential variables.
Learning or performance gains are often measured in improvements of test scores over time. Howeve... more Learning or performance gains are often measured in improvements of test scores over time. However, learners may also answer questions incorrectly which they appeared to master previously, making claims about overall learning gains problematic. Using data from 1,211 grade 6 learners in the Umgungundlovu district in KwaZulu-Natal, we interrogated the consistency of the improvement of their test scores after a year in grade 6. The learners had completed the same 40 question multiple choice test at the onset and the end of grade 6, with no interventions only normal schooling in-between. The content of the test was grade 5 and 6 mathematical content. We know from previous research that the learners were not randomly guessing, yet we found that on average, the learners only got 6 out of 40 questions correct on both test 1 and test 2, did worse on 5 questions and better on 6. Further, almost half the learners both improved on 5 or more questions and declined on 5 or more questions. On 35 questions, more than half the learners changed their answers between the two tests. In other words, their performance is very ‘unstable’. This indicates that learners are not consistent in their thinking, possibly reflecting guessing, albeit not random. Furthermore, the findings point to a methodological issue of making claims about average performance gains, as these may disguise very unstable learner performance. Such claims should therefore be interrogated before they are applied in making statements about links between learning and teaching or other background factors.
Language is a recognised factor in the performance and learning of South African learners, the ma... more Language is a recognised factor in the performance and learning of South African learners, the majority of whom are schooled in a language other than their mother tongue. In this paper, we interrogate grade 6 learners’ answers to 40 questions across the mathematics curriculum qualitatively. Learners from a stratified random sample of public schools in the Umgungundlovu district in KwaZulu-Natal were given a questionnaire on their personal circumstances and a test on mathematical knowledge, mostly from the grade 5 curriculum. They wrote the test at the beginning of grade 6 school year. A quantitative analysis of the results indicated that English home language learners can be expected to score 14.5 percentage points higher on the learner maths test than non-English home language learners, after socio-economic status has been accounted for. However, correlating the difficulty of the question formulation with learner performance did not show any significant correlations. In order to understand further how language, learning and test performance relate, we analysed all learner responses, correct and incorrect, where there was a substantial difference in how favoured they were by English and non- English speaking learners. We found that learners with a home language other than English made more mistakes in interpreting the questions as well as displayed more “misconceptions”.
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Papers by Yougan Aungamuthu
test scores after a year in grade 6. The learners had completed the same 40 question multiple choice test at the onset and the end of grade 6, with no interventions only normal schooling in-between. The content of the test was grade 5 and 6 mathematical content. We know from previous research that the learners were not randomly guessing, yet we found that on average, the learners only got 6 out of 40 questions correct on both test 1 and test 2, did worse on 5 questions and better on 6. Further, almost half the learners both improved on 5 or more questions and declined on 5 or more questions. On 35 questions, more than half the learners changed their answers between the two tests. In other words, their performance is very ‘unstable’. This indicates that learners are not consistent in their thinking, possibly reflecting guessing, albeit not random. Furthermore, the findings point to a methodological issue of making claims about average performance gains, as these may disguise very unstable learner performance. Such claims should therefore be interrogated before they are applied in making statements about links between learning and teaching or other background factors.
test scores after a year in grade 6. The learners had completed the same 40 question multiple choice test at the onset and the end of grade 6, with no interventions only normal schooling in-between. The content of the test was grade 5 and 6 mathematical content. We know from previous research that the learners were not randomly guessing, yet we found that on average, the learners only got 6 out of 40 questions correct on both test 1 and test 2, did worse on 5 questions and better on 6. Further, almost half the learners both improved on 5 or more questions and declined on 5 or more questions. On 35 questions, more than half the learners changed their answers between the two tests. In other words, their performance is very ‘unstable’. This indicates that learners are not consistent in their thinking, possibly reflecting guessing, albeit not random. Furthermore, the findings point to a methodological issue of making claims about average performance gains, as these may disguise very unstable learner performance. Such claims should therefore be interrogated before they are applied in making statements about links between learning and teaching or other background factors.