This is a session of Topic 8: Research in statistics education

Research on developing students’ statistical reasoning

Organizer

• Sandra Madden (United States) : Session chair

Abstract

In recent years and internationally, statistics has seen a marked increase in the school curriculum. Changes in the intended curriculum for school age children in conjunction with technological innovations have had the potential to impact students opportunities to learn to reason statistically. What do we know about how students learn to reason statistically across grade levels and courses? How has their opportunity to reason statistically evolved in light of recent curriculum developments? How can we assess student statistical reasoning? And how does our understanding of students’ statistical reasoning impact future curriculum development? This session will take the view of statistical reasoning that specifically involves making decisions in the presence of uncertainty. Unlike deductive and inductive mathematical reasoning in which conclusions follow logically from definitions, postulates, properties, or theorems, leading to a certain conclusion, statistical reasoning leads to a conclusion that is not certain. Statistical reasoning involves collecting and analyzing data from well-designed studies to answer and interpret statistical questions of interest in which a measure of uncertainty is always present. Papers in this session will focus on the connections and relationships among the intended school curriculum, the enacted school curriculum, and the assessed school curriculum as they relate to students’ opportunity to develop statistical reasoning.

Papers