The algebraic learning of middle school students’ evolution during a school year: a statistical large-scale study based on results in mathematics didactics

This large-scale study characterizes the algebraic learning of a cohort of nearly 800 French students during the last year of middle school (9th grade, 14–15 years old) and examines their evolution in relation to the composition of the classes to which the students belong. Based on the Anthropological Theory of the Didactic (ATD), the study is founded both on a reference model of elementary algebra and on technological-theoretical levels characterizing the students’ reasoning and their knowledge regarding institutional expectations. These are used to code the data and define the statistical variables on which multivariate descriptive analyses are carried out. Students’ learning is analyzed through Pépite, an algebra test given at the beginning and at the end of the year. A cluster analysis resulted in three distinct clusters of similar classes and of similar students both at the beginning and end of the grade 9 school year. They are interpreted didactically and could be useful for a teacher who has to manage the heterogeneity of learning in a class. Some classes and students move from one cluster to another between the beginning and the end of the year, showing a wide variety of ways in which students’ algebra learning progresses or regresses over a school year.