Understanding high school students' ideas about probability: Some findings from Fiji.

This paper reports on data from a large study which explored form five (14 to 16-year-olds) students' ideas in statistics (probability, descriptive statistics, graphical representations, investigations). This paper discusses the ways in which students made sense of probability tasks obtained from the individual interviews. The findings revealed that many of the students used strategies based on beliefs, prior experiences and intuitive strategies. Additionally, in some cases the meaning intended by myself on the interview tasks was not that constructed by the students. As a result, students constructed responses based on these unintended interpretations. While students showed more competence on the formal item, they were less competent on the question involving an everyday context. This inconsistency could be due to contextual or linguistic issues. The paper concludes by suggesting some implications for further research.