Eight working groups at the 2004 MSRI conference “Assessing Students' Mathematics Learning: Issues, Costs and Benefits” were charged with formulating items for a research agenda on the topic of the conference. The moderators of the working groups were:

1. Linda Gojak, John Carroll University

2. Hyman Bass, University of Michigan at Ann Arbor

3. Bernard Madison, University of Arkansas

4. Sue Eddins, Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy

5. Florence Fasanelli, American Association for the Advancement of Science

6. Emiliano Gomez, University of California at Berkeley

7. Shelley Ferguson, San Diego City Schools

8. Hugh Burkhardt, University of Nottingham

The following items were identified by these working groups. Any item mentioned by more than one group appears only once.

1. 1. On the topic of productive disposition, as used by Robert Moses and others (e.g., Adding It Up), the following questions could be studied. How does one actually define this? How does one measure it? How does knowledge of a student's position on a “productive disposition” scale affect assessment? What are the symptoms of an unproductive disposition? (For example, perhaps a student response to a request to work on a task by saying, “I am not working on the task. I am waiting to be told how to do it.”) Is an unproductive disposition a learned behavior? If so, what can be done to change that? What items (e.g., classroom setting, teacher, materials) are important in developing productive dispositions?

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