The role of contextual geometry tasks in the evaluation of educational achievements in mathematics

Abstract

The article shows the relevance of mathematical literacy assessment essential for testing school graduates competence in the field of mathematics (geometry). The authors analyzed the participation of secondary schools in the external evaluation of educational achievements such as: Unified National Testing (UNT), External Evaluation of Educational Achievements (EEEA), PISA (Program for International Student Assessment) and TIMSS (Trends in Mathematics and Science Study). The analysis showed that international evaluation systems tend to test students' competence using practice-oriented or contextual tasks. The authors included several contextual geometry tasks that were used to assess mathematical literacy in the aforementioned testing systems (UNT, EEEA, PISA, TIMSS). Basing on the results of the analysis, the authors con- clude that in actual practice teaching mathematics in senior forms is oriented at forming the ability to solve only educational geometric tasks of various degrees of complexity.