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CANADA is one of 45 countries that participated in the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). Ontario, Alberta, British Columbia, and New Brunswick took part both as "countries" and as part of the Canadian sample. However, only Ontario and Alberta have been full participants in all components of TIMSS.
How did Canada do on the grade-12 or last year of secondary school -- testing, in which 24 countries participated? According to David Robitaille, coordinator for TIMSS and professor of mathematics at the University of British Columbia, "Canada did quite well - better in fact than any of the other G-8 countries that participated [Japan did not participate]. Within Canada, B.C., Alberta, and Ontario had similar results." Robitaille said that these provinces scored significantly above the international average in mathematics and science literacy and in advanced math. They scored at the international average in physics. In the case of advanced math and physics, Robitaille compared the performance of the top 5% of students in order to control for the effects of fairly large differences among countries in the proportion of the students included in those two subpopulations. "If we look at Canada's performance across all three populations [grade 4, grade 8, and grade 12], Alberta looks strongest, with British Columbia next," he said.
In the grade-8 tests, Canadian students did as well as or better than students from 31 countries, posting a mean of 59% correct. Scores ranged from a high of 70% in Singapore to a low of 27% in South Africa, with an international mean of 56%. Alberta, with a score of 65 % correct, ranked third in science and in the top one-third of participating countries in mathematics. One important outcome was that the results showed no significant difference in overall math and science performance between males and females in Alberta or in Canada. This was not the case in the grade12 results, which showed males...