Assessment of secondary students’ number strategies: The development of a written numeracy assessment tool

Abstract

This paper examines the piloting of a Written Strategy Stage Assessment Tool designed to identify students’ “global” strategy stages (and provide formative data for teachers). The year 9 cohorts from two schools were assessed at the end of the school year. Numeracy experts then interviewed a sample, to identify each student’s strategy stage, using an oral assessment. Results from the written assessment gave relatively consistent measures of stages in terms of the criteria set and a relatively close match to national data. Comparison of the written and oral assessment results showed the stages identified by the two measures to be generally consistent.