Abstract

This paper provides an analysis of how Swedish 15-year-olds perform on the high-stakes national assessments in geography. It explicitly addresses which item characteristics produce differential item functioning (DIF) in favor of boys and girls respectively. The findings show that DIF occurs in favor of girls in items with constructed response and primarily with content on the social dimension of sustainable development (SD), while boys are more favored by content outside the field of SD. The conclusions drawn are that content that reaches higher levels of Bloom’s taxonomy favors girls, especially when the subject content concerns SD. This is important when analyzing the teaching and examination of sustainability issues in school.

摘要

本文分析了瑞典 15 岁儿童在高风险国家地理评估中的表现。它明确指出哪些项目特征会分别产生有利于男孩和女孩的差异项目功能 (DIF)。研究结果表明，DIF 在具有构建响应且主要包含可持续发展的社会维度 (SD) 内容的项目中偏爱女孩，而男孩更偏爱 SD 领域以外的内容。得出的结论是，达到 Bloom 分类标准更高级别的内容有利于女孩，尤其是当主题内容涉及 SD 时。在分析学校可持续性问题的教学和考试时，这一点很重要。