| Summary: | A research report submitted to the school of Education, Faculty of Science,
University of the Witwatersrand in partial fulfilment for the degree of Master of
Science
Johannesburg 2017 === South African learners perform poorly in national and international mathematics
assessments (Howie, 2004). A contributing factor to this poor performance is low
mathematics knowledge of mathematics teachers in South Africa (Howie, 2003). One means
of addressing this is professional development programs. The Wits Maths Connect
Secondary Project runs such a program. A test is required by the project in order to assess
whether learners are making learning gains after being taught by teachers who participated
in this program. The focus of this study is the design of a test used to assess learners’
algebraic attainment. The aim is to design an informative and fair test using Rasch analysis.
A sample of 235 learners’ responses to 47 questions was analysed using the Rasch model. In
this study, the mean person measure was 2,87 (SD=1,38) logits, while the mean item
measure was 0,41 (SD=2,25) logits, suggesting that overall, the test was too difficult. For the
learners who wrote this test the person separation index is 1,78 and the person reliability
0,76. This implies that the test may not be not sensitive enough to distinguish between
learners of high attainment from learners with low attainment. Various ways of improving
the test are discussed. === MT 2018
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