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The level of difficulty of mathematical test items is a critical aspect for evaluating test quality and educational outcomes. Accurately predicting item difficulty during test creation is thus significantly important for producing effective test papers. This study used more than ten years of content and score data from China's Henan Provincial College Entrance Examination in Mathematics as an evaluation criterion for test difficulty, and all data were obtained from the Henan Provincial Department of Education. Based on the framework established by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) for test item assessment methodology, this paper proposes a new framework containing eight features considering the uniqueness of mathematics. Next, this paper proposes an XGBoost-based SHAP model for analyzing the difficulty of mathematics tests. By coupling the XGBoost method with the SHAP method, the model not only evaluates the difficulty of mathematics tests but also analyzes the contribution of specific features to item difficulty, thereby increasing transparency and mitigating the "black box" nature of machine learning models. The model has a high prediction accuracy of 0.99 for the training set and 0.806 for the test set. With the model, we found that parameter-level features and reasoning-level features are significant factors influencing the difficulty of subjective items in the exam. In addition, we divided senior secondary mathematics knowledge into nine units based on Chinese curriculum standards and found significant differences in the distribution of the eight features across these different knowledge units, which can help teachers place different emphasis on different units during the teaching process. In summary, our proposed approach significantly improves the accuracy of item difficulty prediction, which is crucial for intelligent educational applications such as knowledge tracking, automatic test item generation, and intelligent paper generation. These results provide tools that are better aligned with and responsive to students' learning needs, thus effectively informing educational practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The annual exam questions in China National College Entrance Examination (CNCEE, commonly known as Gaokao) have attracted wide attention from the entire society in China. This paper analyzes an important math exam question related to always holding inequalities with an unknown parameter from the 2020 CNCEE and builds different solutions via parameter separation or classified discussion, and then gives a systematic and effective design framework for questions related to problems of always holding inequalities and zeros of functions with an unknown parameter for the CNCEE. The framework reveals the internal mechanism of designing the math exam questions in the CNCEE. According to the design framework, two simulated math exam questions with reference solutions will be proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The two studies examined in this paper compare the different mathematical opportunities provided in preschool classrooms in China, Japan, and the United States, with an emphasis on mathematical-themed books in classroom libraries. Study one presents the results of an online survey to examining the content of preschool classroom libraries in China (N = 134), Japan (N = 168), and the United States (N = 291). Study two presents data obtained from semi-structured interviews of teachers in China (N = 8), Japan (N = 8), and the United States (N = 8). The interviews examined teacher perceptions of how they teach mathematics, the importance of teaching mathematics, and the use of the classroom library as a venue for mathematics. Study one results indicated that teachers from all three countries encourage classroom library use; however, teachers from China reported more mathematics storybooks than their Japanese or United States counterparts. Study two results indicated that teachers from all three countries viewed mathematics as important and provided various mathematics learning opportunities to children throughout the school day. Chinese teachers reported providing the most mathematics learning opportunities using whole group instruction, mathematics centers, and free play. Japanese teachers reported few whole group forms of instruction other than circle time but reported providing opportunities for using mathematics during free play and other embedded activities. United States teachers indicated that mathematics learning occurred using whole group instruction and mathematics centers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Both reading difficulties (RD) and mathematics difficulties (MD) are common neurodevelopmental disorders. The co-occurrence of RD and MD, known as comorbid RDMD, is estimated to range between 21% and 45% of children with learning disabilities. Deficits in working memory have been reported in both RD and MD groups, as well as among comorbid RDMD. However, previous comorbidity studies have only examined the role of some components of working memory, and they do not strictly match their groups on relevant reading and mathematics tasks. Thus, the purpose of this study is to examine the nature of working memory deficits in comorbid RDMD after matching groups based on reading and mathematics tasks. We assessed four groups of children (RD [n = 21, Mage = 10.96 years], MD [n = 24, Mage = 11.04 years], comorbid RDMD [n = 26, Mage = 10.90 years], and chronological-age controls [n = 27, Mage = 10.96 years]) on measures of the phonological loop (word span and digit span forward tasks), central executive (complex word and digit span), and updating tasks (word and digit 2-back). The results of ANCOVA (covarying for gender and non-verbal IQ) showed first that the RD and RDMD groups performed significantly worse than the MD and control groups in both measures of the phonological loop. For the central executive and updating tasks, we found an effect based on stimulus type. For word-related tasks, the RD and comorbid RDMD groups performed worse than the MD and control groups, and for number-related tasks, the MD and comorbid RDMD groups performed worse than the RD and control groups. Taken together, our findings provide support for the correlated liability model of comorbidity, which indicates that working memory deficits experienced by the RDMD group are an additive combination of deficits observed in the RD and MD groups, suggesting that working memory tasks used to examine underlying deficits in reading and/or mathematics difficulties may dictate whether or not significant group differences are found. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our study commemorates this event by presenting a retrospective of the publications related to the use of mathematical tools for the analysis of economic, ecological, and environmental phenomena. We analyzed 1257 scientific publications using bibliometric techniques to examine the most productive and influential authors and their contributions in the economic, ecological, and environmental fields. Co-authorship among the top authors and countries, co-occurrence of the keywords, bibliographic coupling of the documents and authors, and author co-citation were analyzed by applying network analysis techniques using VOSviewer software, identifying the intellectual structure of the research and the collaborative networks in the fields. The results show that mathematics has grown impressively in terms of publication and citation. The contributions come from all over the world, but the majority are from the People's Republic of China and Spain. The results also show themes and trends in the economic, environmental, and ecological fields and a predominant use of mathematical tools in optimization processes in order to rigorously substantiate the decisions of investors and policymakers. Thus, our study offers support for any researcher to understand the current state of the art and develop a comprehensive understanding of journal publications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Behavioral strengths and difficulties among children and adolescents may be significantly associated with their academic performance; however, the evidence on this issue for rural youth in developing contexts is limited. This study explored the prevalence and correlates of mental health from three specific dimensions—internalizing problems, externalizing problems, and prosocial behavior—measured by the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ), and the association of these dimensions with academic performance in math among a sample of 1500 students in rural China. Our findings indicated that students in rural China had worse behavioral difficulties and poorer prosocial skills when compared to most past studies conducted inside and outside of China. In addition, total difficulties and prosocial scores on the SDQ were significantly associated with student math test scores, as students whose externalizing, internalizing, and prosocial scores were in the abnormal range scored lower in math by 0.35 SD, 0.23 SD, and 0.33 SD, respectively. The results add to the growing body of empirical evidence related to the links between social environment, mental health, and academic performance in developing countries, highlighting the importance of students' mental health for their academic performance, and of understanding risk factors in the social environment among rural youth in developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]