Comparing Two Distributions: Investigating Secondary Teachers' Statistical Thinking

This paper highlights the statistical thinking of teachers in analyzing their own students' high-stakes test data. The research here emphasizes the impact that an immersion model for teachers-doing statistics as statisticians-can provide in raising statistical content knowledge, engendering a mindset of inquiry, developing facility with technology, and enriching understanding of student outcome data. Four constructs - measurable conjectures, tolerance for variability, context, and inference & conclusions - provide the basis of a taxonomy to describe teachers' statistical thinking about comparing two groups in the context of an accountability system.