Social origin and success in answering mathematical word problems: The role of everyday knowledge

• Advantages for service class students in pure and realistic item category.
• Significant class differences more likely in realistic than in pure items.
• 33% of pure and 62% of realistic items showed significant class differences.
• Further item characteristics did not deliver a more systematic explanation.
• In all, analyses provide mixed evidence to support research assumptions.

International achievement studies have repeatedly shown that working class children are less successful in mathematics than service class children. This study aims to contribute to an explanation for the achievement gap in mathematics. Based on the theoretical work of Bourdieu (1987) we investigate whether reference to everyday knowledge in mathematical items is linked to differences in the response behavior of working class and service class children. We develop a classification system to classify 31 TIMSS 2007 (primary school) items of average item difficulty as either “realistic” (i.e. the math problem is embedded in an everyday setting) or “pure” (i.e. the problem is not). The single item analyses of the correct response behavior showed that, net of cognitive ability and sex, class differences were more likely to occur in the group of realistic items than in the group of pure items. Other characteristics, such as item complexity, number of words (“wordiness”), mode of response, and cognitive/content domain, did not deliver a more systematic explanation of class related differences within or beyond the characteristic “realistic”/”pure”. The limitations of the study are discussed, as well as the study's implications for further research.