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Inquiry Question: How does Performance Task foster opportunities for students to
display critical thi nking and reasoning in secondary mathematic courses?

Background
With the new shift from the former
California Standards to Common Core State
Standards (CCSS) in Mathematics, many schools are
adopting the new Integrated Math Series which
links all branches of secondary mathematics
together: algebra, geometry, probability,
statistics, and trigonometry. Furthermore, with
the new integrated math curriculum, many math
teachers and math departments are rushing to
adapt and restructure their own schools
curriculum in order
to align itself to the
new curriculum
CCSS requires. To
exacerbate the
problem, many
schools find
themselves creating
and recreating
assessments that
are in line with the
rigor, expectation,
critical thinking, and reasoning the CCSS expects
from schools. With only a few examples to draw
from other cities and states that demonstrate the
high expectation California requires, math
teachers and departments are coming together to
rewrite and reinvent assessments that will
challenge the students as well as give the students
assessments that utilizes the mathematics they
have learned in applicable and relevant
assessments. With further reading, this brief
dispels some mystery for math teachers and
department concerning performance tasks.


What is the Big Deal with Performance
Tasks?
This inquiry brief seeks to elaborate on
what a performance task should consists of and
how math teachers and departments can use the
data from their performance task to answer the
critical question: Are students given the
opportunities to demonstrate their critical
thinking and reasoning that is within their
range of mathematical fluency? In addition to
emphasizing critical thinking and reasoning,
performance tasks also focus heavily on writing
and justification of the students answers because
the CCSS
requires students
to be proficient
in their ability to
write and
explain their
justification
because writing
leads to
reflection,
clarification of
ideas, and a
greater depth of understanding into many
processes involved in mathematics (Cooper, 2012).
Exercise vs. Performance Task
There is a clear difference between a
performance task and an exercise. A performance
task requires the student to integrate and utilize
multiple procedures and techniques together in
order to solve a multistep problem with both math
What are
Performance Tasks?
Christian Arturo Wu

Mathematics


An exercise in
mathematics is a
question that directs
the student to solve a
word or math problem
relating to a specific
lesson.



A Performance Task
is a series of questions
that directs the student
to solve the problem
through the use of
combined lessons to
reach one goal.
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and writing that justifies the solution. While an
exercise teaches procedural fluency on a specific
skillset.
An examination between an exercise and a
performance generates a few questions that need
to be addressed: (1) how do we measure critical
thinking and reasoning? (2) How does an exercise
and a performance task offer opportunities for
students to display critical thinking and reasoning?
By investigating the difference of an exercise and
performance task, the purposes of the two options
become
clear.
An
exercise is a
problem
that allows
the students
to practice
their procedural fluency in mathematics. Once a
student becomes proficient from an exercise it is
proposed that if a learner does something
quickly, easily, and perfectly the teacher
should apologize to the student for wasting his or
her time with something that was not challenging
enough to learn any from because the student is
not given the opportunity to demonstrate their
critical thinking and reasoning within their range
of mathematical fluency because they are
proficient already (Foster, 2013).
A performance task allows students to
demonstrate their procedural fluency in a relevant
problem that encompasses the following criteria:
mathematical knowledge, mathematical fluency,
deciphering the word problem, applying
mathematical knowledge in a new context. In
order to analyze the critical thinking and
reasoning of students, the assessment is
measuring whether a student can adapt and
change their acquired procedural fluency in a
performance task that poses a problem outside a
context the students are used to. Most
importantly, a performance task allows a student
to justify their reasoning through writing. In
addition, if a student does not know how to solve a
problem, they can write about mathematics, and
they can express not only their understanding of
the operations they perform but also, more
importantly, their reasoning for performing those
operations(Cooper, 2012).
The fine line between a performance task
and an exercise is the ability to examine whether a
student can apply what they learned from many
exercises onto novel problems and contexts.

The Classroom
The data from these surveys are from a
local high school that consists of 100% first
generation low income students. The schools
demographic are as follows: 68% Hispanic, 10%
African American, 19% Asian/Indo-Chinese, and 3%
White. These students are scattered across 41
zip codes in the San Diego Unified and
Sweetwater school districts. The data consists of
33 returned surveys that come from the Algebra
and Geometry classes. In this high school, the
math department gives their students a mock
final and a final exam. The mock final is to give
students an opportunity to demonstrate their
raw knowledge of their mathematical knowledge.
After the mock final, there is an analysis of the
students test, pinpointing the weaknesses and
strengths so that there is a focused review for
each student. The mock final consists of 40
multiple choice questions (the exercises) and two
performance tasks. The final consists of 40
multiple questions, the original two performance
task with numbers changed, and a new third
performance task.

Data
Analyzing the 32 returned surveys, the data
reveals having a mock final exam and a final exam
gives the opportunities to students to learn and
apply their critical thinking skills more than once.

The pie chart shows that the majority of
the students received enough opportunities for
support for topics and assignments that they were
Q: Are students given the
opportunities to demonstrate their
critical thinking and reasoning that
is within their range of
mathematical fluency?
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Yes because we had to show all of our
thinking and it we couldn't just pick a
letter like in multiple choices. We were
more challenged because we could
answer however we wanted.
Geometry Student
confused on.

In addition to asking if students had the
opportunities to get support for their learning, the
bar chart expresses how beneficial the mock final
exam was to them. The main purpose of comparing
the two questions is to answer the issue of giving
opportunities to display critical thinking and
reasoning. By offering a mock final
and then a final two weeks later after
review, the data suggests that seeing
the performance tasks twice allowed
the students to understand how to
change the focus of their strategies in
attacking the problem. The data
exemplifies that when students are confronted
with the mock final, felt that they were utilizing
what they knew beforehand to attempt their best
for completing the final. One of the student
responses was: Yes because we had to show all of
our thinking and it we couldn't just pick a letter
like in multiple choices. We were more challenged
because we could answer however we wanted.
This echoes the difference between an exercise
and a performance because students are given an
opportunity to explore different ways of tackling a
problem, and in that choice, lies the opportunities
for students to display their critical thinking and
reasoning; and for teachers to see the fruition of
their teaching come out from students. By having a
mock final and a final, the progress or lack of
progress can reveal if opportunities and support
was actually given to the students.
In this local high schools math class, the mock
finals performance task average was below 50%, a
typical average given the difficulty and exposure
to the tasks. The structure of the review is
composed of grouping students by ability level and
giving the students the opportunities to discuss the
exam with each other. There is little to no teacher
instructions given because the main focus of CCSS
is to promote critical thinking and reasoning; the
best method of attaining this is through student-
led discussions that is facilitated by the teacher. It
is purposely done this way in order for students to
reflect on their assessment.
What was prevalent between the mock task
and the final task was that were was an increase in
writing for the justification that is relevant to the
mathematics shown (Foster, 2013). Comparing the
multiple choice section of the exams, there was a
slight increase in the average, but not enough to
draw any results.

Conclusions
The examination of the mock final and final
demonstrates that
exercise problems do
not offer enough
freedom for students to
display their critical
thinking and reasoning
skills. It highlights
where the students are
struggling in their procedural fluency of
mathematics, but it is severely limited in the
aspect of displaying the high level thinking that is
required by the CCSS. The results from comparing
the two finals reveal the following patterns:
Student driven discussion leads to less
mistakes.
Analysis of weaknesses led students to
focus on what they need to practice.
Performance tasks allow students to test
their creativity.
Writing gave the students an opportunity to
explain their reasoning and thought process
if they were unable to show the
mathematics.
Having both a mock final and final enables
the students to display their growth in
thinking and reasoning.

Click here to enter text.
July 10, 2014
I felt as though the
performance task made me use
my knowledge of math to its
fullest extent. Algebra
Student
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Yes it made me really think and learn
to do certain things on my own
Geometry Student
Implications

This inquiry brief examined and analyzed why
and how a performance task is created; and that
is: to challenge the students we have in
mathematics through a multitude of ways:
Writing
Thinking outside the box
Visual interpretation
Multiple units in one task
Connecting mathematics
to real world applications

What is important to understand about creating
a performance task is that the goal of the task is
to evaluate the students performance in their
ability to reason and critically think about a
problem. The task should not be impossible nor
should it be easy. The difficulty in which the task
is created depends solely on how difficult the
teacher wants the question to be and what the
interests are for the class (Delpit, 2012).







Teacher Suggestions

When creating a performance task, math
teachers and departments should keep the
following questions in mind:
What is the overall performance of my
math class?
Which units did my students struggle or not
struggle in?
What are my
students interests?
What are the reading
level of my students?
Should there be a visual attached with the
problem?
Which units make the most sense to
combine together?
How should the students interpret the
question(s)?
Does the wording of the performance
task(s) cause any confusion of questions?

References
Cooper, A. (2012). Today's Technologies Enhance Writing in Mathematics. The Clearing House, 80-85.
Csapo, B. (2007). Research into learning to learn through the assessment of quality and organization of
learning outcomes. The Curriculum Journal, 195-210.
Delpit, L. (2012). Multiplication is for White People: Raising Expectations for Other People's Children.
New York: New York Press.
Foster, C. (2013). Mathematical etudes: embedding opportunities for developing procedural fluency
within rich mathematical contexts. International Journal of Mathematical Education in Science
and Technology, 765-774.
Pitta-Pantazi, D., & Christou, C. (2009). Cognitive styles, task presentation mode and mathematical
performance. Research in Mathematics Education, 131-148.
Stewart, S., & Thomas, M. O. (2009). A Framework for mathematical thinking: the case of linear
algebra. International Journal of Mathematical Education in Science and Technology, 951-961.
Suto, I., Elliot, G., Rushton, N., & Mehta, S. (2012). Going beyond the syllabus: a study of A level
Mathematics teachers and students. Educational Studies, 479-483.