Abstract

AGUIAR, Glauco da Silva. O Funcionamento Diferencial do Item (DIF) como estratégia para captar ênfases curriculares diferenciadas em matemática. Est. Aval. Educ. [online]. 2010, vol.21, n.45, pp.169-189. ISSN 0103-6831.

This article presents DIF - Differential Item Functioning - as an important statistical tool in identifying differences in tests of cognitive ability that make use of IRT- Item Response Theory -, similar to what occurs in educational assessments on a large scale. An item is said to present a differential functioning when students from different groups, who have the same cognitive ability, do not have the same probability of answering the item correctly. This study was developed using Brazil's and Portugal's results in the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) in 2003, whose privileged area of assessment was Mathematics. We analyzed 84 Mathematics items administered to students from 41 countries, out of which 4452 were Brazilian students and 4608, Portuguese ones. The results discussed here show that some Mathematics items present differential functioning between Brazilian and Portuguese students mainly because of the subarea of Mathematics and the context to which mathematical knowledge is applied.

Keywords : Differential Item Functioning (Dif); Item Response Theory (IRT); Mathematics Education; PISA.

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