Assessing Progress in Mathematical Modelling

Evidence of mathematical modelling skill may be obtained through performance of a number of complete tasks or by identifying the appropriate actions in a number of sub-tasks. Success is often gauged by adding the scores on each performance or sub-task. Students of different levels of modelling skill are assumed to receive different scores and students of the same level are assumed to receive the same scores. This paper reports an application of item response modelling procedures to samples from an item collection to investigate this assumption. The results inform the choice of items to meet technical and practical requirements for better assessments in mathematical modelling.