Page 478 - Istenič Andreja, Gačnik Mateja, Horvat Barbara, Kukanja Gabrijelčič Mojca, Kiswarday Vanja Riccarda, Lebeničnik Maja, Mezgec Maja, Volk Marina. Ur. 2023. Vzgoja in izobraževanje med preteklostjo in prihodnostjo. Koper: Založba Univerze na Primorskem
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ja Maričić, Nenad Milinković, and Marija Brković First grade Third grade

Table 3 Cronbach Alpha Coefficient . .
Item
Cronbach’s Alpha . .
Cronbach’s Alpha Based on Standardized Items
N of items 

ferred to the complex relational level, which included examples of equalities
comprising multiple equals signs.

The students had 45 minutes (one school period) to complete the test. The
accuracy of the tasks depended on their success in solving them, so a task
was correct if all given examples were correctly solved, partially correct if only
a portion of the examples were correctly solved, and incorrect if none of the
examples was correctly solved. The data obtained in the test were processed
qualitatively and quantitatively, and the research results were converted into
percentages and presented in tables. Quantitative analysis included the anal-
ysis of the results converted into percentages, whereas qualitative analysis
relied on the analysis of typical errors that occurred in the process of solving
tasks.

Test reliability was determined using Cronbach’s alpha. The value of Cron-
bach’s alpha (table 3) was 0.812 on the test for first-graders (T1), and 0.815
on the test for third-graders (T2), demonstrating high reliability and internal
consistency of the scale for this sample size.

A chi-square test was used to determine the statistical significance of the
differences in results scored by students of different ages.

Results and Discussion

Understanding the Equals Sign at Operational Level

With the first research task, we aimed to examine whether students under-
stand the equals sign at operational level, i.e. whether they view it as a com-
mand ‘to calculate.’ The students were presented with two tasks. The first task
required students to calculate the value of an expression located only on one
side of the equals sign. The majority of students from both grades success-
fully solved this task – the completion rate (95.41) among first-graders and
(94.17) among third-graders (table 4). Differences in performance were al-
most non-existent, as confirmed by the results of the chi-square test (χ2 =
0.165, df = 1, p = 0.685).

The majority of partially successful students made errors in one out of four
examples, and none of the students were completely unsuccessful, i.e. there

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