Real-World Problems Lutz Home
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How can I build effective summative assessments that are equitable for all students in mathematics?The following video summarizes my research performed in my Honors Math 3 classes during the Spring of 2021.
Excerpt from Abstract:
There are many challenges to creating a good assessment that is fair and equitable to all students. In mathematics, teachers often make their own assessments to fit their needs either because the resources available don’t fit their teaching or because there are no assessment resources available. Students' daily social interactions can affect their ability to perform well on an assessment. Their cultural heritage can also affect their ability to show their knowledge base on an assessment. Assessments become a larger issue outside of individual classrooms when considering state-wide testing and tests for college admittance.
Academic Research Poster
Background and Need
Many assessments are already created for a standard textbook series when a district completes an adoption process. However, as individual teachers change each lesson to fit their student’s needs, many times teachers will also revise the assessments. In the case of the mathematics textbook adoption for the researcher’s district, very few high school teachers use the textbook and therefore teachers make their own assessments.
When considering college admittance, the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) and the American College Test (ACT) are also important assessments that students take. All three of these high stakes tests (the CAASPP, the SAT and the ACT) incorporate real-world problems into their assessments. These assessments usually mix in traditional mathematics questions with real-world application of the mathematics concepts. However, a mix of traditional and real-world problems is not usually incorporated into end-of-unit assessments developed by individual teachers.
There is a need for research into designing summative assessments. Many aspects of assessment design need to be researched in order to determine what will best test student understanding of the material and in order to adequately prepare all students to take high stakes tests in high school. This research focused primarily on designing summative assessments by incorporating real-world problems into mathematics units and the end-of-unit mathematics assessment. In addition, this research also investigated DOK levels of the students in the study and used surveys to understand their attitudes around incorporating real-world problems in mathematics and their motivations for learning mathematics.
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