Impact on learning performance and mathematical tasks analysis of the lowest scoring students in TIMSS 2015

The role of mathematics in society is increasing and further educational paths of students depend significantly on their mathematical results in primary school. A student's success in mathematics is influenced by several different factors, and learning mathematics begins already in the preschool period. In the master's thesis, we present the results from the mathematical part of the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (hereinafter TIMSS), which took place in 2015. The TIMSS survey tests knowledge in grades 4 and 8 of primary school. The percentage of students who do not reach the basic knowledge milestone has been decreasing over the years, but in 2015 there were still 5 percent of these students. Among the students who did not reach the basic knowledge milestone are not only students with special needs, but also students from vulnerable groups, such as a less stimulating learning environment due to poverty, an unsupportive home environment, families with a low socioeconomic status, lower education of parents, children of immigrants and culturally different families, as well as students with a lack of motivation, students with anxiety, students who acquire knowledge more slowly; we could probably list many more groups. Learning difficulties in mathematics need to be recognized in time so that appropriate help can be planned. The goal of the research was to determine the influence of the home environment on the performance of students who did not reach the basic knowledge milestone in mathematics in the TIMSS 2015 survey. In the theoretical part, we present the TIMSS research and students who did not reach the basic knowledge milestone in mathematics, the risk factors for the development of learning failures in mathematics and the basic mathematical knowledge that was needed to solve the tasks that we analyzed in the empirical part. In the empirical work, we analyzed whether there are statistically significant differences between the groups of students who did not reach the basic knowledge milestone and those who reached the basic knowledge milestone in mathematics, according to the risk factors for the development of learning failures in mathematics. We found that the success of the students is statistically significantly affected by the involvement of the parents with the child during school, while we did not detect any statistically significant differences between the students in the involvement with the child before the start of school. The mother's education and the socio-economic status of the family also had a statistically significant effect on the success of the students. A statistically significant difference was also detected in the students' previous knowledge of mathematics and in their knowledge of the Slovenian language before starting school. However, we did not observe statistically significant differences in the student's self-assessment of motivation and performance. In the master's thesis, we also analyzed errors in solving mathematical problems in the field of numbers. We analyzed tasks with calculation operations, tasks with addition of calculations, tasks with knowledge of place values, tasks with fractions (knowledge of parts of a whole, values of fractions and text tasks with fractions) and tasks with word problems (basic calculation operations, compound calculations and fractions). The collected data of students who have not reached the basic knowledge milestone gives us an insight into the frequency of errors even in tasks that only require knowledge of facts and procedures. Tasks with higher taxonomic levels were mostly solved incorrectly or not solved at all. Teaching for students with learning disabilities and students from at-risk groups should be individually customized, providing them with such accommodations as will enable them to perform optimally, taking into account factors inside and outside the school. The theoretical foundations and findings in the empirical work can be of help to all professionals who contribute to the student's achievements