I was really trying to avoid commenting on PISA 2025, but enough people flagged enough nonsense, I guess I’m supposed to write something. So, in roughly decreasing order of annoyingness, and as brief as possible, here is the PISA stuff that got up my nose. And, if I missed anyone, good.
Whatever could have gone wrong? Maybe some explicit teaching will fix it?
Whatever. We’ve been here before and I couldn’t give a stuff. I can’t even be stuffed coming up with a clever title. For anyone who does give a stuff, however, the preliminary PISA report and Australia’s report card are now available. Go for it.
What do you call it when you are seriously annoyed by almost everything in an article but then agree with the conclusion? Proof by contracontradiction, maybe? Anyway, that was the feeling on reading the latest piece by SMH‘s education reporter, Christopher Harris:
‘Difficult, cold and abstract’: Why girls feel helpless in this school subject
Yes, the subject is mathematics, of course. And so we have yet another article on girls and maths? And, really, the girls feel “helpless”? Not really, and of course not. Continue reading “Greg Ashman, Mathematics Researcher, on Maths Anxiety”
Tony Gardiner did some hunting and found a document containing PISA’s released mathematics items for 2022. In a comment on our PISA non-post, Tony made some remarks about a triple of triangle questions contained in the document. The questions, each with the same triangle picture prompt, are below. The questions are followed by PISA’s discussion. The detailed marking rubric can also be found in the items document (pp 9-14). Note that PISA is a test for 15-year olds; as with all such tests, the questions are intended to range from easy to difficult.
A couple days ago, I non-responded to the release of the 2023 PISA results (because, this). In a comment on that post, Tony Gardiner referred to a paper he had written for ICME10, held in 2004. In that paper, Tony claims, he “worked really hard … and totally failed” to make sense of “mathematical literacy”, one of the core nonsenses of PISA. Failure or otherwise, I think it’s a great paper, and Tony has kindly given permission to reproduce it here (and the PDF is here).
Continue reading “Tony Gardiner: What is Mathematical Literacy?”
First, enjoy some great Kraftwerk, because, and just because:
Regular readers may recall Australian reporter Natasha Bita. Natasha did some really excellent stenographic work for ACARA. Natasha also played right along with AMSI’s most recent Chicken Little crusade. It turns out that Natasha is an excellent stenographer even when there’s nothing to stenograph. Continue reading “We Are the Robots”
A few days ago Greg Ashman handballed an article to us, suggesting we might enjoy it, although clearly he meant “enjoy” it. The (paywalled) article, just published in the journal Research in Mathematics Education, is titled
Yeah, you don’t have to read the article. We did.
Continue reading “PoSWW 28: The Intersection of Feminism With PISA”
The 2019 TIMSS results are just about to be released, and the question is should we care? The answer is “Hell yes”.
TIMSS is an international maths and science test, given at the end of year 4 and year 8 (in October in the Southern Hemisphere). Unlike PISA, which, as we have noted, is a Pisa crap, TIMSS tests mathematics. TIMSS has some wordy scenario problems, but TIMSS also tests straight arithmetic and algebra, in a manner that PISA smugly and idiotically rejects.
The best guide to what TIMSS is testing, and to what Australian students don’t know and can’t do, are the released 2011 test items and country-by-country results, here and here. We’ll leave it for now for others to explore and to comment. Later, we’ll update the post with sample items, and once the 2019 results have appeared.
UPDATE (08/12/20)
The report is out, with the ACER summary here, and the full report can be downloaded from here. The suggestion is that Australia’s year 8 (but not year 4) maths results have improved significantly from the (appalling) results of 2015 and earlier. If so, that is good, and very surprising.
For now, we’ll take the results at face value. We’ll update if (an attempt at) reading the report sheds any light.
FURTHER UPDATE (08/12/20)
OK, it starts to become clear. Table 9.5 on page 19 of the Australian Highlights indicates that year 8 maths in NSW improved dramatically from 2015, while the rest of the country stood still. This is consistent with our view of NSW as an educational Switzerland, to which everyone should flee. We’re not sure why NSW improved, and there’s plenty to try to figure out, but the mystery of “Australia’s” dramatic improvement in year 8 maths appears to be solved.
UPDATE (09/12/20)
OK, no one is biting on the questions, so we’ll add a couple teasers. Here are the first two released mathematics questions from the 2011 year 8 TIMSS test:
1. Ann and Jenny divide 560 zeds between them. If Jenny gets 3/8 of the money, how many zeds will Ann get?
2. 
(The second question is multiple choice, with options 0.043, 0.1043, 0.403 and 0.43.)
To see the percentage of finishing year 8 students from each country who got these questions correct, you’ll have to go the document (pp 1-3).
There’s much we could write about Matthew Bach, who recently gave up teaching and deputying to become a full-time Liberal clown. But, with great restraint, we’ll keep to ourselves the colourful opinions of Bach’s former school colleagues; we’ll ignore Bach’s sophomoric sense of class and his cartoon-American cry for “freedom”; we’ll just let sit there Bach’s memory of “the sense of optimism in Maggie Thatcher’s Britain”.
Yesterday, Bach had an op-ed in the official organ of the Liberal Party (paywalled, thank God). Titled We must raise our grades on teacher quality, Bach’s piece was the predictable mix of obvious truth and poisonous nonsense, promoting the testing of “numeracy” and so forth. One line, however, stood out as a beacon of Bachism:
“But, as in any profession, a small number of teachers is not up to the mark.”
We is thinking that is very, very true.