Published: Mathematical Competency Demands of Assessment Items: A Search for Empirical Evidence

This paper presents an empirical study of the PISA 2012 mathematics assessment and the Norwegian mathematics exams. Teachers were asked to rate the competency demands certain items and tasks may have, and the resultant ratings were fed into an explanatory item response theory model. Overall, the ratings explained a substantial amount of variance in item difficulties, especially for the PISA mathematics assessment.