Hencke, Rutkowski, Neuschmidt and Gonzalez (2009) make the important remark that the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) examines the effectiveness of curriculum and instruction in relation to student achievement. There is increasing global interest in and attention paid to the resultant rankings of participating countries, making the very participation in TIMSS a high-stake local decision. As a consequence of the heightened (political and educational) stakes, the relevance of the tests to local curricula has come under sharp scrutiny, which makes the issue of alignment of the South African (SA) curriculum with TIMSS important for educators, curriculum workers, test developers and policymakers. Hencke et al. (2009) concede upfront that whilst TIMSS assessments were developed to represent an agreed-upon framework with as much in common across countries as possible, it was inevitable that the match between test and curriculum would not be identical in all countries. However, the more aligned a national curriculum is to what is common across countries the greater the chance of that country’s students performing well. In other words, rather than reject the common core assessments as irrelevant it might be beneficial to investigate in depth what discrepancies exist between SA’s curricula and TIMSS, with special focus on the overlapping content.Mullis, Martin, Ruddock, O’Sullivan and Preuschoff (2009) refer to the TIMSS curriculum model as consisting of an intended curriculum, an implemented curriculum and an attained curriculum, all of which are familiar terms in curriculum theory. For instance, Porter (2004, p. 1) suggests that a curriculum can be divided into four aspects: the intended, enacted, assessed and learned curriculum. The enacted curriculum refers to instructional events in the classroom whereas the assessed curriculum refers to student achievement tests. Mullis et al.’s (2009) attained curriculum refers to student achievement in those tests. For cross-national tests such as TIMSS to be valid, it is critical that their assessed curricula correspond with the intended national curricula. Moreover, assessments aligned with the assessment standards can guide instruction and raise achievement (Martone & Sireci, 2009; Polikoff, Porter & Smithson, 2011). In view of the foregoing it is expected that, in order to be relevant, cross-national studies or tests should provide curriculum information that can help countries to improve the quality of their education systems on the basis of benchmarking performance (Reddy, 2006). This makes curriculum matching analysis a logical starting point.

Undersökningen behandlar huruvida elever känner att de var förberedda för matematikstudierna på gymnasiets naturvetenskapsprogram eller inte.  Undersökningen utförs genom en fokusgruppintervju och tematisk analys används för dataanalys.  Undersökningen visar att majoriteten av elevgruppen vid vilken undersökningen genomfördes kände sig förberedda rent kunskapsmässigt. Undervisningen bedrivs i huvudsak likartat på högstadiet och gymnasiet, en genomgång följt av problemlösning.  Det högre tempot i undervisningen var något man kanske hört talas om tidigare men man överraskades ändå, tempot upplevdes som markant högre. / The survey deals with whether stufents feel that they were prepared for the mathematics studies at upper secondary school's science program.  The survey is conducted through a focus group interview and thematic analysis is used for data analysis.  The survey shows that the majority of the students participating in the survey felt prepared in terms of mathematical knowledge. There was a great similarity in the way the teaching was performed, a presentation on the blackboard followed by individual problem solving.  The higher tempo was heard of but still, it was higher than expected.

Senaste tidens debatt om de ständigt sjunkande matematikkunskaperna hos svenska elever i kombination med den lärarbrist som vuxit fram i den svenska skolan har skapat ett utrymme för diskussion kring och behov av alternativa lärandeformer. Idag utnyttjar ungdomar internet i allt större utsträckning och det är troligtvis där som nya plattformar för lärande har störst potential att lyckas. Den här studien är inriktad på interaktivt e-lärande. Det övergripande syftet med studien är att förbättra förutsättningarna för elevers studier i matematik då de använder en interaktiv e-lärandetjänst. För att åstadkomma detta identifierades tre viktiga aspekter i syfte att mäta hur den digitala studiemiljön i den interaktiva e-lärandetjänsten upplevs. Efter detta togs en metod fram och användes för att förbättra den digitala studiemiljön utifrån de tre aspekterna. Rapporten beskriver hur en interaktiv e-lärandetjänst kan vidareutvecklas genom utvärdering och implementering av ny programvara. Den tjänst som har utvecklats är den svenska interaktiva e-lärandetjänsten Mattecoach på nätet. Utifrån resultaten som erhölls från utvärderingen togs förbättringsförslag fram och implementerades varpå en ny utvärdering följde. I den här studien lyckades vi hitta ett antal förbättringspunkter vilka vi sedemera implementerade en större del av. Resultatet från studien indikerar att dessa förbättringar bidrog till en bättre studiemiljö samt att ett gångbart sätt att utveckla en interaktiv elärandetjänst är att undersöka olika aspekter (tidsaspekt, coachningsaspekt, programvaruaspekt) med syfte att utvärdera tjänsten, och därefter utveckla tjänsten genom att förbättra dessa aspekter med utgångspunkt i teorier om lärande och användares önskemål. / Recent debate about the ever decreasing mathematics skills of Swedish students combined with the shortage of mathematics teachers in the Swedish school system have created the need for alternative forms of learning. Today the number of young people who use the internet is at an all time high and it is probably on the internet that new platforms for learning have the greatest potential to succeed. This study focuses on interactive e-learning. The overall objective of the study presented in this thesis is to improve the conditions for students studying mathematics using an interactive e-learning service. To accomplish this, three important aspects were identified in order to measure how the digital learning environment of the interactive e-learning service is experienced. After that, a method is developed in order to improve the digital learning environment, based on the three aspects. The report describes how an interactive e-learning service can be further improved through assessment and implementation of new software. The service that has been assessed and improved is the Swedish interactive e-learning service Mattecoach på nätet. Based on results obtained from surveys and interviews, potential ways to improve the service were found and parts of those improvements were implemented. In order to assess the improvements made, a second evaluation was conducted. In this study, we managed to find a number of improvement points of which we later on implemented a big part of. The result from the study indicates that these improvements contributed to a better study environment and that a viable way to develop an interactive elearning service is to examine different aspects (time aspect, coaching aspect, software aspect) with the aim to evaluate the service, and then develop the service by improving these aspects based on theories of learning and users preferences.