THE ALIGNMENT OF MATHEMATICS TEACHERS’ WORKED EXAMPLES AND WRITTEN EXAM TASKS TO THE CURRICULUM OBJECTIVES

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Alignment refers to the degree of correspondence among the objectives, instruction, and assessment. Although curriculum alignment is one of the most important factors increasing student achievement, there exist few studies about this concept in the educational literature. Based on this gap, in the current study, it was aimed to explore the alignment of mathematics teachers’ worked examples and written exam tasks to the learning objectives of the middle school mathematics curriculum. Multiple-case design with multiple units of analysis was used in the study and maximum variation sampling was used in the selection of the participants. The main data sources of this study were the elementary (grades 1–4) and middle school mathematics curriculum (grades 5–8) released in 2009, lesson observations conducted in the 7th grade classrooms in the first semester of the educational year 2013–2014, and written exam tasks prepared by the teachers for assessing students’ learning of the topics covered in this semester. Data were analyzed via the technique of cross-case synthesis. The findings showed that the level of alignment between teachers’ worked examples, written exam tasks, and the curriculum objectives was satisfactory for the numbers learning domain. However, the teachers demonstrated severe misalignments in the algebra, probability and statistics, and geometry learning domains. Recommendations on how to improve teachers’ curriculum alignment competencies were provided based on the findings.

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The concept of alignment , mathematics curriculum objectives , worked examples , written exam tasks , mathematics teachers , 7th grade students

Abant İzzet Baysal Üniversitesi Eğitim Fakültesi Dergisi

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Abant İzzet Baysal Üniversitesi Eğitim Fakültesi Dergisi