This study aimed to investigate whether there was evidence of variation in the quality of School-Based Assessment (SBA), with specific reference to Grade 9 mathematics. Assessment has been a prime focal point for educational reform in recent years. In the South African context, there are common external assessments carried out below Grade 12. However, assessments are placed entirely in the hands of individual teachers. Moderation and monitoring as quality assurance mechanisms are also conducted internally at varying degrees, which raises the issues regarding the validity, reliability, and credibility of SBA tasks. Learner achievement in mathematics had recently been a debated issue in national and international assessments. Furthermore, South Africa's Grade 9 learners have been performing below the expected levels in mathematics as compared to the rest of the world. A qualitative research approach was used within a case study research design. Purposeful sampling was employed, and five schools with 15 participants were selected. The data were collected through questionnaires, semi-structured interviews, observations and field notes, and were triangulated by document analysis in order to make the findings and conclusions more reliable. This study revealed that there is a varying degree in the quality of mathematics SBA tasks, and a lack of knowledge about quality assurance mechanisms. In addition, the study revealed that the participating teachers lacked knowledge on how to develop high quality SBA tasks. This study followed Scheeren's input-process-output model (2004), which was further adapted to provide an opportunity to identify enhancing or impeding issues associated with the quality of SBA and learner achievement at Grade 9 level. / Dissertation (MEd)--University of Pretoria, 2016. / Science, Mathematics and Technology Education / MEd / Unrestricted

Thesis (M.Ed. (Mathematics Education)) -- University of Limpopo, 2022 / A classroom in which learners are afforded opportunities to engage in meaningful mathematical discourse (Sfard, 2008) is desirable for the effective teaching and learning of mathematics. However, engagement in mathematical discourse requires learners to use appropriate mathematical vocabulary to think, learn, communicate and master mathematics (Monroe & Orme, 2002). Hence, I have undertaken this study to explore how mathematical vocabulary is used during mathematical classroom discourse using the lens of the commognitive framework. I chose a qualitative approach as an umbrella for the methodology with ethnography as the research design whereby participant observation, structured interviews and documents were used to collect data. One Grade 9 mathematics classroom with 25 learners and their mathematics teacher were purposefully selected as participants in the study. During data analysis, I looked at Sfard’s (2008) constructs of the commognitive theory to analyse the data and identify the mathematics vocabulary used in the discourse. This was followed by the use of realisation trees that I constructed for the teacher and learners’ discourse, which I used to identify learners thinking as either being explorative or ritualistic. Results indicate that both the teacher and learners use mathematical vocabulary objectively with positive whole numbers to produce endorsed narrative regulated by explorative routines. However, with algebraic terms both positive and negative, the teacher and learners’ discourse is mostly disobjectified, and produces narratives that are not endorsed and are regulated by ritualistic routines. It also became evident that the mathematical vocabulary that the teacher and learners use in the classroom discourse includes words that are mathematical in nature and colloquial words that learners use for mathematical meaning. v Furthermore, learners’ responses to the given mathematics questions which they are solving are mostly correct, hence it can be argued that the learners’ narratives were endorsed. However, their realisation trees indicates that learners were not working with mathematical objects in their own right (Sfard, 2008) and hence their narratives were not endorsed. I have recommended in this study, that teachers need to be cautious when operating with entities and not separate operations from their mathematical terms. Furthermore, the department of basic education, during workshops should encourage educators to always request reasons from learners substantiating their answers to questions in order to enhance their explorative thinking.