Topic 2
Statistics education at the school level
Convenors
- Pip Arnold (New Zealand)
- Kazuhiro Aoyama (Japan)
- Pedro Arteaga (Spain)
- Zachariah Mbasu (Kenya)
- Maria Meletiou-Mavrotheris (Cyprus)
Abstract
Statistics and hence statistics education are of vital importance to the whole of society and to all disciplines. In order to achieve the objective of a statistically literate citizenry, educational leaders have in recent years been advocating a much wider and deeper role for probability and statistics in school mathematics, and also prior-to-schooling. It is now widely recognized that the foundations for statistical and probabilistic reasoning and thinking occur at both the pre-school and school level.
This topic will explore the latest developments and approaches to probability and statistics at the school level (pre-school up to and including secondary level) including the development of children’s understanding of data and chance across a range of contexts. Here a variety of techniques and concepts for data collection, handling and interpretation can be presented and explored, in harmony with concepts of chance. Themes related to statistics at the school level that could be addressed include but are not limited to: a) theory and pedagogy of early statistical and probabilistic learning; (b) early statistical and probabilistic learning contexts and domains; (c) learning and learner support in practice; (d) evaluation and assessment of early statistical and probabilistic learning at the pre-school and school level; (e) policy issues regarding early statistical and probabilistic learning; and (f) issues of equity and diversity. The authors can identify current best practices, place them within the overall context of current trends in statistics education research and practice, and consider the implications both theoretically and practically.