This paper is from Session 4F: Teachers, their questions, and their interpretations
which comes under Topic 4: Improving teaching and capacity in statistics education
Paper 4F2 (Tuesday 10th, 11:00-12:30)
Exploration of preschool teachers’ representativeness notions of statistical graphs
Presenter
- David Alfonso Paez (Autonomous University of Aguascalientes, México)
Co-authors
- Eleazar Silvestre Castro (Instituto Politécnico Nacional, Mexico)
- José Antonio Altamirano Abad (National School for kindergarten Teachers, México)
- José Antonio Orta Amaro (National School for Kindergarten Teachers, México)
Abstract
In this article we present a research whose objective was to explore the interpretation of statistical graphs by preschool teachers in service. We particularly sought to know their notions on the representative value of a graphically represented data set. The participants in the study were 20 teachers who were asked to analyze a bar graph and two histograms. To analyze the information gathered, we used the levels proposed by Curcio (1989). The results show that the participants have difficulties extracting information from the graphs and, as representative value of a graph they focus on the mode or a point in-between values of it. Preschool education demands specialized knowledge to promote graph interpretation in and outside the classroom.