An Investigation into Students' Global A-Level Mathematics Performance and their Performance in Routine and Non-Routine Questions

January 1997 - January 1998

(Contact: John Berry - University of Plymouth or Professor John Monaghan)

Other project members:
Peter Johnson - University of Leeds
Wendy Maull - University of Plymouth

The University of Leeds work was supported by the Departmental Investment and Restructuring Fund, University of Leeds. The project team would like to thank the Research & Evaluation Division of the University of Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate for providing A-level Mathematics scripts. Several schools in the Plymouth and Leeds regions assisted the project team. Special thanks is given to Susan Metcalfe of Heckmondwike Grammar School.

Two files below provide details of the project. The PME paper provides an 8 page summary of the project. After that is the project report which provides a little extra detail.

The project was fun and, we hope, useful but it raised many more questions than it answered. One upshot of the project is that all of us involved will be very careful in our future use of the word ‘routine'!

Publication
BERRY, J., JOHNSON, P., MONAGHAN, J. & MAULL, W. (1999). Routine Questions and Examination Performance, in Proceedings of the 23rd Conference of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education, Haifa, Israel. Vol. 2, pp.105-112. ISSN 0771-100X.

Details of the project
Project report (PDF File)
PME paper (PDF File)

This project last updated by Peter Edwards on 17th February 2006.