Abstract
In recent years a group at Auckland University has made an analysis of the results in the nationwide Year 12 calculus examination and the ‘Equity in Mathematics Education’ team in Wellington has done a similar investigation of the corresponding statistics paper. Both groups initially analysed the raw (unscaled) marks from the candidates for the 1987 and 1988 examinations on the basis of gender, school authority and school type. Of these three effects the first two were significant for the statistics examination and the last two for the calculus paper. The candidates were then divided into cohorts depending on whether they took both or just one of these mathematics papers. The effect of the number of mathematics papers a student took was highly significant, consequently the three-way analysis was repeated for each cohort. Gender was then no longer significant in either study but type and authority were significant for both analyses. An overview of the effect of gender in a question by question analysis of each examination has been included.
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Morton, M., Reilly, B., Robinson, E. et al. A comparative study of two nationwide examinations: Maths with calculus and maths with statistics. Educ Stud Math 26, 367–387 (1994). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01279521
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01279521