As statistical education evolves as a discipline more research involving the examination of statistical reasoning across disciplines is anticipated. For example, statistical investigations can cross into areas of scientific reasoning quite easily. In both situations, research questions are posed; data are collected, analyzed, graphed and interpreted. Instead of integrating statistics in the curriculum there is still a division of labour, whereby math educators are responsible for the teaching of statistics, and science teachers the teaching of scientific inquiry. Cross-disciplinary relationships need to be further examined in terms of our definitions of statistical reasoning and how we assess learning and problem-solving across disciplines. Two case studies will be contrasted to reveal the differences between statistical reasoning in a middle school science classroom and a mathematics classroom.
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