: Introduction
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The assessments included sixteen tasks investigating students’ understandings, processes and skills in the area of mathematics called measurement. Measurement includes knowledge, understanding and use of systems of measurement, the use of measurement apparatus, and processes of predicting, calculating and recording. This chapter includes tasks relating to money.

Sixteen tasks were identical for both year 4 and year 8. Seven tasks had overlapping versions for year 4 and year 8 students, with some parts common to both levels. Three tasks were attempted by year 4 students only, and seven by year 8 only. Twelve are trend tasks (fully described with data for both 1997 and 2001), ten are released tasks (fully described with data for 2001 only), and eleven are link tasks (to be used again in 2005, so only partially described here).

The tasks are presented in the three sections: trend tasks, then released tasks and finally link tasks. Within each section, tasks attempted (in whole or part) by both year 4 and year 8 students are presented first, followed by parallel tasks, then tasks attempted only by year 8 students.

Averaged across 101 task components administered to both year 4 and year 8 students, 25 percent more year 8 than year 4 students succeeded with these components. Year 8 students performed better on 95 of the 101 components. As expected, the differences were generally larger on more difficult tasks. These often were tasks that many year 4 students would not yet have had much opportunity to learn in school.

There was little evidence of change between 1997 and 2001. Averaged across 41 trend task components attempted by year 4 students in both years, 2 percent more students succeeded in 2001 than in 1997. Gains occurred on 25 of the 41 components. At year 8 level, with 45 trend task components included, 2 percent fewer students succeeded in 2001 than in 1997. Gains occurred on 15 of the 45 components.

A representative range of measurement systems, processes and applications was covered in the set of tasks attempted by students. At both levels students’ skills of reading measurements were substantially stronger than those of making good estimations. Moderate to low percentages of year 8 and year 4 students demonstrated abilities to effectively explain processes and strategies for making and checking measurements.

 
Chapter Graphic
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