Are writing questions in math fair?
In this paper we examine whether a student’s language background and other demographic factors have any relationship to their performance on prose questions in math, which we define as questions with open-ended answers containing one or more complete sentences of English. Prose questions stand in c...
Saved in:
| Main Authors: | , , , |
|---|---|
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Indiana University Office of Scholarly Publishing
2025-03-01
|
| Series: | Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/josotl/article/view/36135 |
| Tags: |
Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
|
| Summary: | In this paper we examine whether a student’s language background and other demographic factors have any relationship to their performance on prose questions in math, which we define as questions with open-ended answers containing one or more complete sentences of English. Prose questions stand in contrast to non-prose questions, which are more traditional questions in math courses, requiring an objective answer, such as a number, an equation, a diagram, etc. Performing an exploratory analysis on n=463 students in a first-year linear algebra course, we use a step-down regression to identify significant factors contributing to a student’s non-prose tilt (how much better a student performs on non-prose vs. prose questions). We find gender is the only significant factor contributing to a student’s non-prose tilt . In particular, no linguistic factors we considered, including whether or not a student was a native English speaker, emerged as significant.
|
|---|---|
| ISSN: | 1527-9316 |