AN INTERNATIONAL COMPARISON OF PERFORMANCE ON TIMSS ELEMENTARY MATHEMATICS ITEMS WITH POTENTIAL FOR COVARIATIONAL REASONING.

We previously (Gantt et al., 2023; Paoletti et al., 2021) identified items from the publicly released TIMSS 2011 assessments that had potential for students to employ covariational reasoning as a solution strategy. In this report, we explore the extent to which fourth-grade students' performance on such items in mathematics differed among 26 nations. Using multilevel modeling, we conclude that, in general, fourth-grade students were less successful on mathematics items for which covariational reasoning was a viable strategy than on items for which we could not identify a possible covariational reasoning strategy. However, three countries (Finland, Sweden, and the Netherlands) did not follow this pattern. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]