Mathematics: Trends in Year 5 mathematics achievement 1994 to 2006
This report describes the mathematics achievement of Year 5 students in TIMSS 2006/07. Trends in New Zealand’s achievement over the 12 years from 1994 to 2006 are examined, along with comparisons with other countries. Analyses of achievement by sub-groupings (such as gender and ethnicity) and background information are also presented. It was originally published in December 2008 and revised in September 2009 due to the mislabelling of the content domains knowing and applying. The current version rectifies this error.
Author: Robyn Caygill & Sarah Kirkham [Ministry of Education]Date Published: December 2008
Revised Version: September 2009
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- Overview of TIMSS
- Acknowledgements
- Key findings
- Introduction
- Trends in New Zealand mathematics achievement 1994 to 2006
- New Zealand mathematics achievement in 2006 in an international context
- TIMSS and the New Zealand mathematics curriculum
- Mathematics achievement by gender
- Mathematics achievement by ethnicity, language, and country of birth
- Mathematics achievement by socio-economic status and home educational resources
- Student activities outside of school
- Student attitudes
- Discussion of interactions
- Conclusion
- References
- Definition and technical notes
- Erratum
Student activities outside of school
Previous cycles of TIMSS have shown that watching television and videos was the most popular leisure activity for Year 5 students (see Caygill, Sturrock, & Chamberlain 2007). Leisure activities are of interest in TIMSS as they can provide positive learning experiences as well as the negative implications of reducing time for doing school-related learning at home. While no judgements are made in this section of the value of leisure activities, and acknowledging that learning occurs within and outside of school, it is interesting to look at the changes over time and also to examine the relationships with achievement.
Table 17 presents the mean number of hours per school day that students reported spending on a variety of activities, along with the proportion of students who reported spending more than 2 hours on each activity. Note that it is possible that some of these activities were ‘multi-tasked’. For example, students who spent an hour after school playing sport with friends selected "playing sports and playing or talking with friends". Playing or talking with friends and playing sports were the two most popular activities for Year 5 students in 2006. Television watching was relegated to third most popular activity in 2006 in contrast with previous cycles of TIMSS.
Table 17: The proportion and mean amounts of time Year 5 students reported spending on leisure activities
| Leisure activities |
Mean number of hours
per school day |
Proportion spending more than 2 hours (%)
|
| Watching television and videos |
1.5 (0.03)
|
25
|
| Playing computer games |
1.0 (0.02)
|
15
|
| Playing or talking with friends |
1.7 (0.03)
|
31
|
| Doing jobs at home |
1.3 (0.03)
|
20
|
| Playing sports |
1.7 (0.03)
|
30
|
| Reading a book for enjoyment |
1.2 (0.02)
|
18
|
| Using the internet |
1.1 (0.02)
|
16
|
Notes:
Mean number of hours based on: No time=0; Less than 1 hour=0.5; 1-2 hours=1.5; More than 2 but less than 4 hours=3; 4 or more hours=4.5. Activities are not necessarily exclusive.
Standard errors are in parentheses.
The relationship between the number of hours spent in the individual activities and mathematics achievement was relatively consistent across the activities. Students who reported a small or moderate amount of time in an activity generally had higher achievement than those who reported no time or many hours on the activity.