The Italian national education assessment system: Building mathematics items

Abstract

International audienceIn this paper we describe how mathematical items are constructed for the Italian National Education Assessment System (SNV). After a brief description of the structure of the Italian SNV, we describe-through an example-how mathematical items are analyzed and finalized before being submitted to Italian students of different school grades. Each item is analyzed from two different perspectives: first the mathematical content and its relevance in the teaching and learning of mathematics is considered and then the statistical analysis of the field trial results are examined. The challenge we face is to maintain an appropriate balance between these two different aspects