Developing quantitative literacy for 8th grade students by tasks with diversity and reality contexts

Abstract

For many students, maths at school is a separate knowledge from everyday life. To support students to bridge the gap between maths and reality, they must have the opportunity to practice and apply their learned maths knowledge to situations besides maths. In this paper, we make an assessment quantitative literacy for 8th grade students by tasks set in diverse realistic contexts. The tasks of the study are designed based on the model of quantitative literacy of Goos et al., 2011, together with a four-level evaluation framework proposed by the authors. The results from the data analysis have led us to conclude that the 8th grade students’ quantitative literacy are not yet high, especially for tasks placed in unfamiliar contexts. Thus, we also make some suggestions to develop this competency of students.