Evidence of students’ performance in expository passages and non-mathematical documents: data from the pilot version of the IEA reading literacy research study

Abstract

This article discusses evidence of students’ performance in responding to comprehension questions on expository passages and non-mathematical documents (performance on the narrative passages and the majority of the scientific/mathematical documents has been discussed elsewhere). The data is from the pilot version of the IEA Reading Literacy Research Study which is currently being carried out by about forty countries including Zimbabwe. Basically the results discussed here reveal that students performed better on the documents and on the expository passages which had no science content. Students were also better able to tackle questions on the literal level of understanding as opposed to those on the interpretative or evaluative levels. We conclude by raising a number of further questions whose answers will be provided by data from the main study.