Assessment Instrument for Pre-Service Teachers' Mathematical Proficiency in Real Numbers

A 35-item assessment instrument measures mathematical proficiency in real numbers across four strands: Understanding, Fluency, Problem Solving, and Reasoning. The instrument was developed and validated by Mehdi Parsinia, with data collected from 117 first-semester pre-service secondary mathematics teachers at the University of Cologne, Germany. The dataset was last updated in May 2026.

Use Cases

• Diagnosing specific deficits in mathematical understanding based on the four proficiency strands.
• Measuring learning gains from instruction based on the instrument's demonstrated sensitivity.
• Evaluating the reliability of scoring for reasoning tasks based on the reported inter-rater reliability.
• Comparing pre-service teacher knowledge across different cohorts or institutions using the validated instrument.

Strengths

• Contains 35 items systematically sampling four strands of mathematical competence.
• Validation study involved 117 participants and demonstrated robust psychometric properties.
• Showed exceptional sensitivity to instruction with very large effects for Reasoning and Fluency strands.

Limitations

• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Data is limited to 117 pre-service teachers from a single German university.

Provenance

Source

figshare

Collection Method

Administered as a test to pre-service teachers at the beginning and end of a foundational mathematics course.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-05-14 05:30:38; freshness should be verified.

Geography

University of Cologne, Germany