This paper describes two versions of a teaching experiment that traced the development of Basotho elementary students' thinking with regard to sample space and probability of an event. The instructional design phase of the teaching experiment was informed by a cognitive framework that describes and predicts Basotho elementary students' growth in probabilistic thinking (Polaki, Lefoka, & Jones, 2000). Twelve students (9-10 year olds) drawn from grades 4 and 5 of an elementary school took part in a six-week instructional program. Analysis of qualitative data revealed, amongst other things, a weak and often unstable part-part schema that was minimally effective in enabling the students to order probabilities in 1-dimensional situations, and a stronger and more stable part-part schema that made it possible for some students to experience greater success at listing complete sets of outcomes, and to order probabilities in 1- and 2-dimensional situations.
The CAUSE Research Group is supported in part by a member initiative grant from the American Statistical Association’s Section on Statistics and Data Science Education