This paper is from Session 9B: Teaching Statistics in African and other developing countries
which comes under Topic 9: An international perspective on Statistics education Full topic list
(Thursday 6th, 14:00-15:30)
Looking at the mathematics curriculum and mathematics textbooks to identify statistical concepts that Lesotho’s high school students experience
Presenter
Abstract
Recent research on Basotho pre-university students’ understanding of statistical concepts has revealed some serious discrepancies. In order to lay a foundation for addressing this problem, this paper examined the nature of statistical concepts these students have experienced by looking at the high school mathematics curriculum and the type of statistical tasks used in two high school mathematics textbooks that are used in the entire country. With regard to the nature of statistical concepts covered, we found that the syllabus and the textbooks do not touch on sampling issues and related concepts. Furthermore, the statistical tasks used in the textbooks were predominantly procedural, with little or no room for data analysis, critical interpretation of the data, and statistical inferences. Additionally, both documents seemed to have paid little, if any, attention to the use of technology to support the acquisition of key statistical concepts. This paper presents these results, drawing some instructional, curricular and research implications.
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