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

which comes under Topic 2: Statistics education at school level

Analysis of teachers’ understanding of covariation in the Vitruvian Man context

Presenter

• Irene Cazorla (State University of Santa Cruz, Brazil)

Co-authors

• Cláudia Borim da Silva (University of São Judas, Brazil)
• Verônica Yumi Kataoka (State University of Santa Cruz, Brazil)

Abstract

This work aims to analyze how 24 high school in-service teachers understand covariation, within the context of Vitruvian Man. This concept was explored in an informal way during a teaching intervention mode, by applying tasks in which teachers observed the height and arm span of students. They had to describe both variables, and answer whether it was possible to say that the height and arm span measurements were equal. They were also asked to construct the scatter plot with and without drawing the linear function. Just after the construction of the scatter plot and the linear function, teachers considered that the measurements of both variables were close. We believe that at the end of the set of tasks, the understanding of covariation in this group of teachers was improved, leading us to think that proposals such as these can aid the training of math teachers for teaching this topic in schools.