نبذة مختصرة : The purpose of this paper was to examine the cross-national performance of fourth- and eighth-grade students in mathematics on the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) 2003. The TIMSS assessment data were used to identify nations that have a competitive edge in the critical area of mathematics. The Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) is an ambitious international assessment that provides comparative data on student achievement among participating countries and benchmarking jurisdictions. TIMSS 2003 assessed the mathematics knowledge of more that 360,000 fourth- and eighth-grade students in participating countries in the 2002-2003 school year. Data were collected from students in the countries in the southern hemisphere from September-November, 2002. In countries in the northern hemisphere, data were collected from February-July, 2003. TIMSS 2003 provides an array of data that may be analyzed and used to frame policy guidelines in education, especially in teaching and learning of mathematics. Data analyses portrayed interesting findings. Data from TIMSS 2003 showed that fourth-grade students in Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, Chinese Taipei, and Belgium-Flemish outperformed the world. At the eighth-grade, Singapore, Korea, Hong Kong, Chinese Taipei, Japan, and Belgium-Flemish outsmarted the world. The following recommendations, among others, may be of benefit to low performing countries in improving the achievement of their students in mathematics: (1) Low-performing nations should make their teacher education admission, curriculum, graduation, and certification requirements more challenging to teacher education candidates; (2) Teacher education programs should be designed with a fifth year post certification internship. During the internship, novice teachers will be gradually introduced to the teaching profession. This is obtained in medical and some other health professions. Teaching is critical as the medical profession; (3) Teacher education systems should establish new teacher induction and support programs. These induction and support programs should include seminars and workshops, mentoring, observing veteran teachers in classrooms, team teaching, peer interactions, lighter teaching load, and assignment to less challenging classrooms. New teacher induction and support programs should be used as a means of reducing new teacher attrition rate, thereby increasing teacher retention. (Contains 2 tables.)
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