Explaining differences for Serbia and Slovenia in mathematics achievement in fourth grade
Explaining differences for Serbia and Slovenia in mathematics achievement in fourth grade

Summary/Abstract: This paper presents the findings that are parts of a larger internationalproject studying the achievements in mathematics and science for students inprimary and lower secondary education. Specifically, we focused on the study of differencesin mathematics achievement for Serbian and Slovenian fourth-graders. The study used asample of 7,861 fourth-grade students from Serbia (N = 3,736) and Slovenia (N = 4,125). Theresults showed that Serbian students had higher overall achievement and scored higher inboth the number content and the knowing cognitive domains, whereas Slovenian studentsscored higher on the geometry content and the data content domains, also having a higherbalance among achievements for both content and cognitive domains. It was also foundthat Slovenian students had higher self-confidence in learning mathematics. Because therewere no other significant differences between Serbia and Slovenia with respect to two othercontextual variables and the correlations among these three contextual variables, theexplanations of the achievement differences were based upon the consideration of variousaspects of curriculum, teaching practice, and teachers’ professional development in Serbiaand Slovenia. The paper raises the question of educational implications of these findings andthe possible directions of improving the quality of mathematics teaching.

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