Abstract

In this study I investigate the degree of alignment in cognitive demand among the Peruvian national assessment, the mandated curriculum, teaching, and the official textbook. I used Doyle’s framework for academic tasks, to analyze the levels of cognitive demand of the tasks posed to students at each of these levels of curriculum implementation (Doyle, 1983). I found a significant problem of alignment between the tasks posed to students in the Peruvian national assessment and the tasks posed at the other curriculum levels (mandated curriculum, text, and teaching). The test tasks correspond to the categories of Problem Solving and Comprehension, the mandated curriculum learning outcomes and the textbook exercises to Comprehension and Application of Algorithms, and the tasks teachers present to students in classroom are basically at the level of Application of Algorithms according to the study framework (Doyle, 1983). Findings in this study coincide with those in previous studies in Peru, reporting that there are mostly exercises in the workbook for the content area of Numbers (Cueto, 2003). However, I found that there is a relative alignment between the percentage of learning outcomes in the mandated curriculum and the amount of pages and exercises assigned in the workbook for each content area in the mathematics mandated curriculum (i.e., numbers, geometry and measurement, probability and statistics).

I found a problem of alignment in terms of cognitive demand between the tasks the workbook offers to students and those that teachers present to students in classroom. One of the teachers participating in this study went beyond the workbook and offered students multiplication problems of higher cognitive demand. In the second observed classroom, I found that the textbook offered students tasks at a relatively higher cognitive level as compared to those presented by the teacher in class.

In light of these findings, I recommend a more effective dialogue between the test developers and the curriculum designers, a revision of the mandated curriculum, the inclusion of the (revised) mandated curriculum and curriculum materials in teacher training programs, and further research on teachers’ mathematics content knowledge.