The
lucky cat, a traditional Chinese symbol of good fortune. Photo by Juliane
Zielonka.
Identifying an Agenda for Statistics Instruction and Assesment in K-12
The wide spread consensus among educators and researchers is that statistics education, in its current form is inadequate. A discouraging finding regarding statistics is that most individuals have a limited understanding of the subject matter. Given that statistics instruction has generally restricted to those pursuing professional academic careers, this limited understanding is not surprising. What is discouraging, however, is the finding that a large proportion of university students fail to understand elementary statistical concepts, even after taking several courses. Students’ lack of conceptual understanding may be due, in part, to their having had insufficient early exposure to statistics instruction. This perception has led to the consideration of teaching statistics in the early grades. Because models of statistics instruction at the university level are quite sophisticated, and not always effective, new approaches for teaching and assessing statistics in K-12 must be developed. Statistics instruction must be redesigned to include activities that empower the student, are engaging, provide students with opportunities for doing statistics, and demonstrate relevance to real-world applications. A problem-solving focus can help promote statistical understanding by providing students with opportunities to inquire, investigate, analyze, and interpret rather than to compute and memorize. (p. xii)
Part of the difficulty with statistics pedagogy in K-12 is that the content is as new for many teachers as it is for students. (p. xv)
Lajoie, Susanne P. and Romberg, Thomas A. “Identifying an Agenda for Statistics Instruction and Assessment in K-12” in Lajoie, Susanne P. Ed. Reflections on Statistics: Learning, Teaching, and Assessment in Grades K-12, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers, 1998
