Journal article
Relationships between opportunity to learn and class prior attainment in mathematics
- Abstract:
- Students’ opportunity to learn (OTL) mathematics in terms of the curriculum they experience in school has been shown to be associated with their mathematics attainment, and to mediate socioeconomic impacts on attainment. The strength and nature of these associations vary considerably across country and cultural contexts. This study aims to examine how the average student prior attainment at the class level is associated with their opportunity to learn during instruction on quadratic equations across seven educational systems. The study involves secondary data analysis of the dataset arising from the Global Teaching InSights video study of the teaching of quadratic equations, including both student-reports and teacher-reports of OTL, lesson videos and the accompanying materials, alongside a measure of student prior-attainment. The analysis shows that in many contexts, there were differences in the content exposure students experienced in higher attaining classes in relation to the algebraic methods and processes taught and the opportunities to engage in mathematical reasoning, compared to lower attaining classes, but not in all. In contrast, there was little difference in the amount of time spent on the different solution methods for quadratic equations, except in England. The differences between these two measures of OTL raise further questions about whether it is the amount of OTL that is associated with attainment, or the nature of that OTL and reveal a more complex relationship between OTL and mathematics attainment that has important implications for policy and practice.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 1.0MB, Terms of use)
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(Preview, Supplementary materials, pdf, 2.7MB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1007/s10763-026-10687-7
Authors
- Publisher:
- Springer
- Journal:
- International Journal of Science and Mathematics Education More from this journal
- Volume:
- 24
- Issue:
- 5
- Article number:
- 63
- Publication date:
- 2026-06-03
- Acceptance date:
- 2026-05-25
- DOI:
- EISSN:
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1573-1774
- ISSN:
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1571-0068
- Language:
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English
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
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2423485
- Local pid:
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pubs:2423485
- Deposit date:
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2026-05-25
- ARK identifier:
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Jenni Ingram
- Copyright date:
- 2026
- Rights statement:
- © The Author(s) 2026. Open Access. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
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