An insight into elementary school pupils' achievements in the content area data

Abstract

Ability to work with data, as a component of mathematical literacy, is one of the necessary segments of the general literacy of citizens of modern society. Within the mathematics curriculum it was introduced much later than the traditionally studied content areas. Since its introduction on national level in 1997 until 2012, the only assessment of pupils' achievements in mathematics at the end of elementary education was done in 2001. Worldwide, reference data are part of the international study TIMSS. The research reported in this paper is focused on evaluation of pupils' achievements in the content area data at the end of elementary school. An empirical research was conducted using a test consisting of selected released items from TIMSS 2003 and the National Assessment of pupils' achievements in mathematics in 2001. The test was administered to a sample of 404 grade 5 pupils in the school year 2011/2012 (25 classes from 9 schools). The sample is not representative of the entire population hence no general conclusions may be derived. The results reveal differences in the achievements in the content area data obtained by pupils in schools from different areas of urbanity. The lowest results were achieved by pupils in a suburban school with a significant percent of Roma population. The practice of pupils reading assignments incompletely appears repeatedly as a hindering factor. The authors recommend that pupils are trained for independent work, from reading the assignments and their requirements to performing each step separately, which also preserves the cognitive level of tasks. This goal needs to be emphasized within the national documents that determine the quality of education.