Estudo longitudinal de alunos com padrão de desempenho avançado em matemática no Avalia-BH/2010-2013

Abstract

This study sought to investigate Math performance in a group of students enrolled in city-run schools in Belo Horizonte, during the last three Elementary School years (7th, 8th, and 9th grades), which stand for the third cycle of education background. The students were ranked Advanced Performance, according to Avalia-BH - assessment tool developed by Belo Horizonte Secretary of Education – (2010 edition), when they were enrolled on the 6th grade. Those students started the 7th grade with no learning gap, they were ready to build on knowledge on Math. At the end of the three-year period, when they were assessed at the 2013 Avalia-BH edition, nearly 13% of them showed the same favorable performance. In 2014, performance data of students from Belo Horizonte city-run schools showed that, while on the first and second cycles, respectively,16,2% and 7,2% of students reached Advanced Performance Standard; on the third cycle, only 1,6% achieved such performance. The current study was conducted due to the low percentage of third cycle students ranked in the Advanced Performance Standard. Data relevant to 5,401 third cycle, Belo Horizonte city-run students on Math performance together with context questionnaire data, the questionnaires were answered by the students. The first were collected over four assessment waves and context questionnaire data were collected in 2013 during the last wave. The methodology used was analysis of student performance data base and Avalia-BH context questionnaire data. Fundamentals by authors, such as Brooke, Soares, Oliveira, Lee, Bonamino, and others were paramount to analyze the data collected for this study. The results proved that students who were more autonomous, i.e., that relied less on their teachers for learning had better performance than students who needed more teacher support for learning. Therefore, students who achieved Advanced Performance Standard on this stage did so due to their own merits, in detriment of school’s capacity to offer good quality teaching. Another result is that there are few actions targeted at high performance students conducted by the Belo Horizonte Secretary of Education; also, those students showed no motivation to study.