1. Introduction
In 1998, the National Research Council [
1] stated that mathematical skills are needed to participate fully in everyday life. Although this statement was written over twenty years ago, many still consider it a valid suggestion. Mathematics is not only the language of science, but also the language needed to engage with domains such as finance, business, and health. Additionally, it provides nations with the knowledge to compete in the technological sphere [
2].
The literature around the goals of mathematics education reflects the increasing use of practical mathematical knowledge of quantitative problems in everyday life. Gellert and Jablonka [
3] argue that the “mathematisation of society” has, more than ever, created the need to equip students with the appropriate mathematical knowledge and skills to allow them to participate effectively in this “mathematised world”, and to understand the quantitative problems they face in their lives. Consequently, appropriate and relevant goals in mathematics education is on the political agenda of many countries and, indeed, the UAE is no different; it is an ambitious country which is focused on equipping a new generation which can face life’s challenges at the international level. Education in the UAE is considered an essential element in the development of the nation and the best investment in its youth; as such, it aims to invest in the knowledge economy instead of relying on oil and gas [
4]. For this reason, the National Agenda for UAE Vision 2021 emphasized that the current education system must become first-rate and have teaching methods suited to the country’s future needs [
5].
National governments use the results of international assessments to guide educational policy, often under the slogan of “raising standards”. Based on their experience as researchers conducting international studies, Stigler, Gallimore and Hiebert [
6] emphasized how this valuable kind of research permits intercultural comparisons. By discovering practices which are not observed everywhere, we can reflect both on these and our own ways of doing. As such, this provides researchers and educators with alternative ways to improve mathematics teaching [
7].
The National Agenda of the UAE has set eight major educational goals, one of which is for UAE students to be among the global best at reading, mathematics, and science in international tests such as PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment). PISA was created by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to assess achievement in reading, mathematics, and scientific literacy, with its first cycle in 2000. PISA is of particular interest as it is implemented every three years for students aged 15, who are thus approaching the end of compulsory education in most participating education systems. PISA is not curriculum-oriented and goes beyond the school curriculum to measure the use of knowledge in daily tasks and challenges. For this reason, it measures young people’s success in acquiring knowledge and their ability to use it in specific areas to meet real-life challenges. Although all three subjects are evaluated in each cycle, one major topic is assessed in depth, and the other two are minor areas of that cycle; the major topic is rotated in each cycle. Mathematical literacy (ML) is the main subject of the postponed PISA exam of 2021, which will be held in 2022 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The UAE National Agenda [
8] set a goal for the UAE to be among the top 20 countries in the PISA assessment. PISA allows the UAE to compare its students’ achievements with those in other countries and to examine the effectiveness of their educational systems. According to Sanderson ([
9], p. 1), the PISA 2018 results showed that the UAE ranks highest in the Arab world for all three subjects of reading, mathematics, and science literacy; however, no Arab country exceeded the OECD average in these subjects. Moreover, looking at the same 2018 results, UAE students had generally low performance and ranked 50th in mathematics out of nearly 80 countries, despite an increase in score of about eight points compared to the 2015 cycle [
10]. Thus, the UAE must do more to rank among the top 20 countries, as its results indicate that the general path of the UAE is “stable” [
10], as supported by UAE results in previous PISA cycles.
Table 1 shows the results for each main subject area.
Additionally, the existing literature on gender and academic achievement have different perspectives and findings. For example, the trend in OECD countries has been that male student achievement in mathematics in PISA outperforms females with males scoring five points higher than females [
12]. However, student results in the UAE were inconsistent with the OECD trend where females demonstrated better mathematical literacy than males. The results showed girls outperforming boys in mathematics by nine points [
12].
Statement of Problem
The UAE is making great strides towards education reform and developing the first educational system to achieve both Vision 2021 and the National Agenda goal of being among the global best. The aim of education reforms is to ensure that all students maximize their potential at school [
13]. As such, the UAE has invested heavily in educating its next generation as it seeks to reduce its dependence on oil and gas. In January 2017, Hussain Ibrahim Al Hammadi, UAE Minister of Education said, “We want to move from an economy based on oil to a new economy based on the human knowledge of both nationals and expatriates alike who will use knowledge as a tool to compete and move the country forward” ([
14], p. 1). Those students who benefit from this educational reform must use mathematics in their everyday lives because helping students become successful people outside of the classroom is just as important as teaching the curriculum.
Enhancing students’ competencies and abilities in various literacy skills in reading, mathematics and science by creating an ideal, high quality educational foundation is a key pillar of the UAE National Agenda [
8]. Andreas Schleicher, Director for Education and Skills at the OECD, said of the UAE’s performance: “In mathematics, we are seeing the continuation of a positive trend, here the UAE is broadly on track of achieving its ambitious performance targets” [
9]. However, this ranking shows that students’ ability to use mathematics to think about their lives, make plans for their future, and think about important problems and issues in their lives is insufficient to the achievement of the UAE’s goal of scoring among the top 20 countries. Moreover, the PISA 2018 results revealed that only about 5% of UAE students can perform at the fifth and sixth levels [
15]. These alarming findings indicate the need for educational intervention to enable UAE students to perform at higher levels of mathematical literacy because they are the primary force for nation-building in many areas of the country.
Nevertheless, an educational environment is required which meets the needs of all learners, including the gifted and high achievers. In this regard, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) proposed that “all students be guaranteed equal access to the same curricular topics [and] does not suggest that all students should explore the content to the same depth or at the same level of formalism” ([
16], p. 131). Previous research on the current state of mathematics education for the gifted in the UAE has revealed limitations concerning specialized mathematics programs for gifted students. Moreover, mathematics teachers were also negative regarding the effectiveness of these gifted programs, where available [
17]. Thus, a mathematics enrichment program (MEP) is proposed in this study, to address these limitations and increase students’ readiness for the future and their ability to use what they learn effectively. The effectiveness of this MEP was tested with tenth grade students.
4. Results
The results included descriptive statistics and the analysis of group and gender differences to compare groups, as shown below.
4.1. Descriptive Statistics
The means and standard deviations were calculated for both the pre- and post-tests of ML for both the males and females, as shown in
Table 4.
Table 4 shows that the post-test ML results for males and females increased in both the experimental and control groups, but that the increase in the experimental group was much greater for both genders. The female students averaged 18.17 in the experimental group and 10.80 in the control, while the males averaged 12.81 in the experimental group and 8.85 in the control. This was a good starting point for inferring the positive impact of the MEP. Hence, with the experimental group scoring higher than the control in the post-test, it was expected that this could be due to the intervention, provided that other confounding variables were controlled. Consequently, to ensure that this post-test difference was indeed a result of the treatment and not random variation in the pre-test between groups, a one-way ANCOVA was used to examine the effectiveness of the MEP in controlling the pre-test of ML [
32].
4.2. Analysis of Group Differences
The effect of the MEP on the ML of the male and female students, who were taught in separate schools, was investigated using ANCOVA by controlling the pre-test. Thus, the effect of the MEP on the adjusted ML post-test of the females was examined using one-way ANCOVA, as
Table 5 shows.
Table 5 shows that the ANCOVA test was significant
F(1, 46) = 29.714, and
p = 0.000 < 0.0005, partial η
2 = 0.392. The effect size eta-squared is interpreted as small, medium, and large if it possesses the values 0.01, 0.06, and 0.14, respectively [
36]. Hence, for this study, the effect size is large, meaning that 39.2% of the ML post-test results were due to the MEP. Similarly, the effect of the MEP on the adjusted ML post-test of the males was examined using ANCOVA and is shown in
Table 6 below.
Table 6 shows that the ANCOVA test was significant
F(1, 50) = 31.045, and
p = 0.000 < 0.0005, partial η
2 = 0.383. The effect size is large and means that 38.3% of the ML post-test results were due to the MEP, indicating that the implementation of MEP on the experimental group was positive regarding the ML of both the female and male tenth grade students.
A post-hoc comparison performed using the Bonferroni method to control for Type 1 errors [
32] showed a statistically significant difference between the experimental and control groups (
p < 0.0005), which also indicates that the implementation of the MEP had a positive effect on the ML of both sets of students. This can also be seen clearly from
Table 7. The experimental group outperformed the control when the adjusted mean scores of the experimental and control groups were compared with pre-tests as a covariate for both female and male students.
Table 7 shows the adjusted mean scores for ML for the students in the experimental and control groups using pre-test as a covariate.
There is a demonstrable difference across the means of the experimental and control groups, and the results of the experimental group in the post-test of ML were better than those of the control group for both females and males. In other words, the ML of the females and males in the experimental group improved as a result of the MEP.
4.3. Analysis of Gender Differences
Similarly, to study the gender differences, ANCOVA was also used to compare the difference in the effect on females and males with the pre-test as a covariate to control for students’ previous levels.
Table 8 shows that the ANCOVA test was not significant
F(1, 48) = 0.580,
p = 0.45, partial η
2 = 0.012, indicating that there was no statistically significant difference in the post-test of ML results between the female and male groups when adjusted for the pre-test results. This indicates that both the males and females gained a similar increase in their level of ML. Although the adjusted means using the Bonferroni method [
32] show that the females outperformed the males, the difference was very small and so insignificant.
Table 9 shows the adjusted mean scores for ML for the experimental groups of females and males using the pre-test as a covariate.
Based on the previous ANCOVA tests, it was found that the MEP had a positive effect on the students in the experimental groups, whether male or female.
Furthermore, students were asked the following question, “Do you recommend running this program for students to improve their mathematical literacy?” Most student responses showed that they would recommend it based on their experience. The frequencies and percentages of all students who would recommend the program are presented in
Table 10.
The number of students of both genders who would recommend the program was forty-four (86.3%), while only seven would not (13.7%). Most of the students who would not recommend were males (five males versus two females). In short, the large percentage of students who would recommend the MEP is another clue to its positive impact on students’ ML.
5. Discussion and Conclusions
Most students perceive mathematics as a difficult subject due to the lack of real-life connection and unattractive teaching methods [
37]. However, the proposed MEP, which mainly consisted of contextual mathematical problems, was successful and increased the students’ mathematical literacy. Thus, the increase in students’ achievement in ML is likely due to more meaningful learning, which allows information to be stored more quickly and remembered more easily for retrieval [
38].
All potential confounding variables such as time difference, teacher influence, and topics to be covered were controlled. Thus, it is appropriate to draw meaningful conclusions based on the effect of the treatment. The study showed that student participants in the MEP were more likely to improve their ML. This study demonstrated the positive impact of an MEP designed to focus on solving contextual problems and reasoning as the main components of ML. With the goals of improving ML and meeting the UAE Vision 2021 of being among the top 20 countries for PISA, this study is a major first step in establishing data-based decision-making protocols and processes for analysing instructional programs.
The mean scores for both genders on the post-test of ML were increased, reflecting the positive impact of the MEP on the students’ ML. This increase was explained by the results of the post-test compared to the pre-test, with the latter being a covariate to control for students’ previous levels. This finding supports those of other studies, for example [
39,
40], which indicated that using contextual problems improved students’ achievement in mathematics. Our results showed that increased ML was more evident among females than males.
The results of the current study also revealed no significant difference between male and female students, in line with other studies [
41,
42]. However, the females in our study showed slightly better ML than the males. Similar results were revealed by Ajai and Imoko [
43], who also employed a quasi-experimental pre-test. Moreover, our results were consistent with the PISA 2018 results for the UAE, as girls outperformed boys in mathematics by nine score points; this contrasted with the trend in OECD countries, in which males scored five points higher than females [
15].
More recently, much previous research has laid great stress on producing valid and practical PISA-like questions, because the PISA test is considered one of the most powerful measurements of literacy in mathematics. These questions were designed and examined by various researchers [
44,
45,
46,
47], who developed PISA-like problems in different content areas of mathematics and reached the same conclusion as our study on the positive impact of these problems on the students’ ML.
Implications and Future Research
The implications of the study indicate that the mathematics curriculum should regularly include contextual problems. Mathematical modelling, such as with contextual problems, is recommended for all curricula and grades and curriculum writers are encouraged to consider the potential of modelling in promoting mathematical proficiency and engagement when problems are meaningful to students.
The NCTM [
48] has indicated that assessment and education should be complementary, such that the assessment provides information for the teacher to use in making educational decisions. Thus, it may be necessary to apply higher level tests with more difficult elements than achievement tests appropriate for the grade level. Thus, if the test does not contain sufficient elements of difficulty appropriate for the student, the result may not indicate the true level of their understanding [
49].
In fact, it is believed that adding meaningful context to mathematics problems has the potential to promote student motivation [
50]. For further research, students could be interviewed to gain more insights to enhance such programs, in addition to measuring students’ actual engagement in the classroom through observations, teacher reports and questionnaires. Furthermore, research should study the students’ self-regulated learning skills as these could be another important factor that explains the results of studies such as this. This view is also supported by [
51].