Assessments, in particular high stakes assessments, impact the nature of teaching and learning. Given this, the goal of
citizenship if seen as important needs to feature within high stakes school exit assessments rather than only as part of
curriculum and assessment policy rhetoric. South Africa’s Mathematical Literacy (ML) curriculum foregrounds critical
democratic citizenship. We analyse the ML Grade 12 exit assessments from their start in 2008 to 2020 to understand
the emphasis placed on critical citizenship and how this emphasis has shifted over time. The literature base links critical
citizenship orientations with reasoning and reflecting questions, so we focused on examination questions in this category. Our
findings show shifts away from critical citizenship related agendas towards foregrounding a life preparation orientation for
the self-managing person. Linked with this shift, we note a move away from general societal contexts towards more personal/
individual contexts and moves from almost entirely national contexts to inclusion of global contexts. We noted movement
from more open-phrased questions towards closed ‘check figure calculated is valid’-type questions. Assessment memoranda
suggest assessors view these questions as reasoning items, eroding the critical citizenship agenda. While increasing numbers
of students are taking ML rather than Mathematics, average performance stands at around 40%. This points to limited and
diminishing access to mathematical reasoning and reflecting for critical democratic citizenship. The paper highlights ways
in which analysis of examinations over time can provide a window into the presence or absence of the citizenship agenda
in mathematics education.
Metadata
Item Type:
Article (Published)
Refereed:
Yes
Uncontrolled Keywords:
Mathematical Literacy; Assessment; Democratic citizenship; Critical citizenship; South Africa