An Investigation of the Relationship between Mathematics Performance of Students in a Non-Routine Problem, according to Grade and Gender

Abstract

This study aims to investigate the relationship between performance of students in solving a proportional reasoning problem and the variables of gender and grade level, respectively. The participants in the study included 540 students (320 girls and 220 boys) in the first, second, and third grades of junior high school in Isfahan's schools. Students were asked to respond to non-routine problems in a special sheet that had been prepared in advance. The strategies used by students in the answer sheets were then analysed by using a theoretical framework from the research literature in mathematics education, and classified into seven categories as follows: no answer, sheer collective, non-real, procedural, transition, novice and professional strategies. Kruskal-Wallis and Mann and Whitney statistics were used to evaluate the significance of the effects of each grade and gender factors on the student performance. The results showed that the overall performance of boys was better than that of girls. Also performance of the first grade students was significantly higher than the second and third grade students' performance. Other differences were not significant.