Measuring Austrian students’ procedural knowledge at the end of upper secondary level

Abstract

The number of complaints university lecturers make about a lack of knowledge, especially first-year students’ procedural knowledge, has increased recently. Due to missing adequate empirical evidence, a survey of procedural knowledge among students of Austrian high schools in their final year was conducted. For this purpose, test items for procedural knowledge were created, validated and processed by a total of 455 students without technology and formula booklets. The test items were based on a theoretical model with the dimensions number of procedural steps, curricular grade level, content area and rating of importance. Linear models were used to describe the dependencies between the students’ success rate and these dimensions. The results show that the level of procedural knowledge among the students is relatively low overall. A closer look reveals that tasks at lower secondary level have a significantly higher students’ success rate than tasks at upper secondary level. Furthermore, there is a positive correlation between the students’ success rate of a task and the experts’ assessment of whether this task should be able to be solved by students without technological aids. Interestingly, the dimensions number of procedural steps and content area have no significant impact on the students’ success rate.