Canadian Grade 4 students out-scored American students in science,
and Grade 8 students did the same in mathematics in an international
test of hands-on problem solving known as performance assessment,
according to survey results released today.
The results are part of the latest findings of the Third International
Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). The results show Canadian
Grade 4 and 8 students performing above the international average,
and better than their American counterparts, in the majority of
the tasks tested in those areas.
The scores obtained by Grade 4 students in mathematics and Grade
8 students in science were similar in both countries.
“Canadian students did well relative to other countries that met
sampling requirements,” says David Robitaille, international co-ordinator
of TIMSS and head of the Faculty of Education’s Dept. of Curriculum
Studies at the University of British Columbia.
TIMSS — the world’s largest survey of the teaching and learning
of school mathematics and science skills — is based at UBC.
Canadian Grade 4 students averaged 45 per cent correct scores compared
to the U.S. students’ 41 per cent and an international average of
40 per cent. Canadian Grade 8 students averaged 60 per cent correct
compared to 55 per cent for the U.S. and an international average
of 59 per cent.
All the tasks assigned to the students involved hands-on activities
such as measuring the elasticity of a rubber band as greater weights
are suspended from it, creating a graph from the data and then extrapolating
beyond the recorded data.
Another task, aimed at measuring the students’ sense of spatial
relations, involved designing three different shaped boxes that
would tightly contain four small balls.
Canadian Grade 4 students did well, scoring better than the international
average on 11 of the 12 tasks. While Grade 8 students scored consistently
higher than Grade 4 students, they scored above the international
average on only seven of 12 tasks.
This may indicate that Grade 8 students do not have as many opportunities
to work with real-world tasks as their Grade 4 counterparts do,
Robitaille says.
On the tasks where Canadian students from both grades performed
below the international average, they also achieved lower scores
than the American students in the same grades.
Hands-on problem solving, or performance assessment, is aimed at
making tests and examinations more reflective of the real world
by calling on students to demonstrate their knowledge and skills
in authentic settings.
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