Contributed paper list


   (Wednesday 14th, 08:20-09:20)

The effect of contextualising probability education on differentiating the concepts of luck, chance, and probabilities among middle and high school pupils in Quebec

Authors

François Larose, Jimmy Bourque, Viktor Freiman

Presenter

François Larose (Canada)

Abstract

On the one hand, the field of probabilities is certainly the most obscure and the least developed area in the sphere of statistical education in Canadian middle and high schools. On the other hand, mastering probabilities is doubtless the field of school learning that offers the most potential for transferring knowledge to other fields of experience in the pupils’ lives, notably regarding gambling and money. Within the scope of this study, carried out among over 1,600 pupils in middle and high schools, we have collected their implicit definitions of gambling, luck, and probabilities. A textual data analysis of their discourse shows that they confused these concepts and strongly associated them to luck, while the notion of random variability remained obscure. Contextualising probability education from the point of view of what youth really does facilitates in this respect the construction of distinct notions.