Contributed paper list


   (Tuesday 15th, 15:45-17:15)   In session C8A

Vergnaud's theory applied to basic school students’ statistical representations

Authors

Soledad Estrella, Arturo Mena

Presenter

Soledad Estrella (Chile)

Abstract

This study addresses the conceptualization of the table and its teaching possibilities at school level. The theoretical framework adopted is the theory of conceptual fields, which allows for a cognitive analysis of conceptualization in learning. Vergnaud (1990, 2013) affirms that mathematics is needed to characterize with minimum ambiguity the knowledge contained in ordinary mathematical competencies and highlights the fact that this knowledge, although intuitive and implicit, should not hide the need for mathematical concepts and theorems for analyzing it. The study explores primary-school children’s comprehension and how they make sense of statistical frequency tables by examining their productions when they are faced with a data analysis situation. From a qualitative research standpoint, the mathematical relations underlying the operations students use to resolve a situation were analyzed. The principal result of this study is the identification of different levels of conceptualization of the table for students in the same age group.