This paper is from Session 2C: Secondary school statistics education: ages 13 +

which comes under Topic 2: Statistics education at school level

Teaching statistics at secondary education in Italy: some issues on large scale standardized test results

Presenter

• Stefania Mignani (University of Bologna, Italy)

Co-authors

• M Gabriella Ottaviani (Sapienza University of Rome, Italy)
• Robert Ricci (National Institute for Educational Measurement, Italy)

Abstract

This paper focuses on recent issues in statistics learning outcomes coming from the national large-scale standardized tests administered to all students in 2013 by the National Institute for the Evaluation of the Educational System (INVALSI) at the end of 10th grade. Utilizing a representative sample of around 32000 units, we study several items assessing statistics skills that are part of the test concerning mathematics. The INVALSI data set allows replying issues as: which kind of contents do students learn with more difficulty? Do males perform better than females? Does the level of achievement differ among type of schools? Do the results show differences between mathematics and statistics outcomes according school types? The answers to these issues help to explain the quality of student learning with the view to improve taught curricula and suggest more effective pedagogical strategies for statistics.