Assessment Research Of The Eighth Graders Students' Algebra Literacy

With the rapid development of modern information technology,mathematics is widely used in all aspects of social production and daily life,mathematical literacy has become the basic literacy of every citizen to work and life in modern society.Internationally,the study for evaluation of mathematical literacy of students is giving more and more attention.However,algebraic literacy as an important part of mathematics literacy,the specialized research on its theory and practice is not mature at home and abroad.Thus,the present study attempts to rich the algebraic theory and practice by studying algebra literacy.This paper mainly from the following several aspects to explore algebra literacy.First,through collecting,collating and analyzing the existing literature to sort out the research status of mathematical literacy and algebra literacy connotation,elements and evaluation,thereby defining the meaning and components of algebra literacy in this paper.Second,by analyzing the assessment program of international student,to summarize the similarities and differences of each mathematical literacy assessment framework,and then according to the algebraic literacy connotation and components defined herein,to determine the assessment framework of algebraic literacy.Third,developing the two-way breakdown of algebraic literacy assessment.The assessment framework of algebra literacy in this study including content,cognitive and affective dimensions,in content dimension,common knowledge in the field of "number and algebra" of the three sets of middle school mathematics textbooks in domestic PEP,East China Normal University and Beijing Normal University as a benchmark.Based on theory of SOLO and TIMSS in cognitive domain.In emotion,theexplain of emotional attitude and values in the third period of "full-time compulsory mathematics curriculum standards(2011)," as a reference.Thereby,determining the present study content of algebra literacy evaluation,and to develop a two-way breakdown of algebraic literacy assessment.Fourth,compiling evaluation papers of this study accordance with the two-way breakdown.To ensure the validity of the test paper,the prediction test for 49 students was executed before the study.Calculating the difficulty,discrimination and reliability of research tools based on test paper,and invited 39 experts to determine the test paper validity,according to the results of test to adjust the content of the paper,finally obtained the test tools in this study.Fifth,using test tools to assessment for six different levels middle schools of 670 students in the eighth grade of Xinxiang,using Excel2013,SPSS20.0 to process and analysis data.Finally,according to the analysis result,obtained the status quo of eighth graders algebraic literacy,and thus giving recommendations to improve literacy algebra.The main conclusions of this study are as follows: First,on the whole,most students have reached a basic level of literacy generations;second,male and female students in the algebra literacy shows marked differences,the algebra literacy of girls is overall better than that of boys.Third,there is significant differences between urban and rural students scores of algebra literacy,the algebraic of urban students is better than in rural areas;fourth,algebra literacy is a significant positive correlation with skills and attitudes,not significantly different related with gender,namely,the better of students master the knowledge of algebra,the higher the level of Algebra Literacy.