STATISTICS EDUCATION RESEARCH JOURNAL

Determinants of secondary school teachers’ attitudes towards probability and its teaching

2024-07-24T05:32:37+00:00

Probability literacy has gained importance in educational curricula. The aim of this research was to analyse secondary education teachers’ attitudes towards probability and its teaching and to examine differences across the factors of gender, academic training, and work experience. From a positivist paradigm, a quantitative methodology was used. The sample consisted of 185 in-service teachers, and the instrument used was the Attitudes Towards Probability and Its Teaching questionnaire. The results suggested that gender had no effect on teachers’ attitudes, but having a mathematics background was associated with a relevant weight on teachers’ attitudes. Work experience presented a medium effect on the behavioural aspect of the teaching probability dimension, with better attitudes among teachers who had more work experience. This led us to acknowledge the importance of disciplinary knowledge in both initial and continuing training.

Preservice teachers interpreting and acting on students’ responses to a probability problem

2024-11-21T13:30:47+00:00

To ensure the learning of mathematics, teachers must be able to analyse their students’ mathematical practices when solving tasks, interpret the difficulties that students encounter, and decide how to manage students’ difficulties. This competence in didactic analysis and intervention allows teachers to adapt their teaching to meet individual student needs. In this paper, we analyse how preservice teachers interpreted students’ responses to a task involving the proportional determination of probabilities and understanding the sample space. We propose didactic strategies that help students overcome difficulties. The results revealed the difficulties some preservice teachers experienced in adequately interpreting student responses and making informed decisions to improve learning.

Which measure of central tendency is most useful? Grade 6 students’ expressed statistical literacy

2024-07-24T18:59:10+00:00

Recently, the importance of statistical literacy has been stressed, and three central concepts in statistical literacy are the measures of central tendency: mean, median, and mode. This study explores aspects of statistical literacy expressed by 12–13-year-old students, focusing on mean, median, and mode. Their responses were analysed using a framework of statistical literacy that includes knowledge and dispositional elements. The results showed that students’ descriptions of the measures were mainly based on mathematical and vocabulary knowledge. When discussing what measure was easiest or hardest to explain, a variety of conceptions were expressed. Some explanations about the usefulness of the measures were related to context knowledge. Here, the median was an exception as students gave neither examples of contexts nor found the median useful outside the classroom.