Literature Index

Skill in the critical reading of data, which is a component of quantitative literacy, is becoming a necessity in our highly technological society. In particular, processing information presented in newspapers, magazines, commercial reports, and on television is dependent on a reader's ability to comprehend graphs. To meet the needs of society, industry, and business, our students must become adept at processing information. As stated in the Curriculum and Evaluation Standards for School Mathematics, children must be involved in collecting, organizing, and describing data. They should be able to construct, read, and interpret graphs as well as analyze trends and predict from the data (NCTM 1989, pp. 54, 105). This book is intended to provide elementary and middle school teachers and teacher educators with practical ideas on incorporating the graph-reading component of quantitative literacy into the instructional program. It can be used to supplement the teachers' editions of K-8 textbooks or as an elementary methods text for preservice and in-service teachers. It provides many suggestions for activities that can be used with youngsters in both small-group and large-group instruction. In support of the Standards (NCTM 1989), the activities presented in this book provide teachers with ideas to emphasize exploration, investigation, reasoning, and communication in mathematics. Furthermore, suggestions for using the computer as a tool are presented in many activities. This material can be used at different grade levels, depending on the learners' prior experiences with collecting and analyzing data. The data generated and collected by the students should be interesting and meaningful to them.

Although statistical variation does not receive detailed attention in mathematics curriculum documents, students actually experience variation every day of their lives. Among other varying phenomena, the weather provides a topic of discussion for young and old. From early childhood, teachers are known to put up weather calendar charts recording the weather for weeks at a time. This study uses the weather context to explore students' development of intuitive ideas of variation from the third to the ninth grade.<br><br>Three aspects of understanding these intuitions associated with variation are explored in individual video taped interviews with 66 students: explanations, suggestions of data, and graphing. The development of these three aspects across grades is explored, as well as the associations among them. Fifty-eight of the students also answered a general question on the definition of variation and variable and these responses are discussed and compared with responses to the weather task. The interview protocol may prove useful for teachers, particularly with younger children, to appreciate students' developing understanding of variation and provide starting points for classroom work of a more specific nature, either with respect to weather or other contextual topics.

The Schools Council Project on Statistical Education, working in England and Wales and based at the University of Sheffield, was the first national project in the world to look specifically at the statistical education needs of all pupils in the 11-16 age range and to develop teaching materials to meet these needs. In this paper I have tried to show some of the many things anyone developing new teaching materials has to take into account. I have indicated how they affected the teaching material of the Schools Council Project on Statistical Education and the approach taken by the project team. I hope that this will help any of you who have to develop teaching material in your own countries to identify the areas of concern and produce relevant material for you pupils.

This paper describes a pilot study exploring the acquisition of new statistical content knowledge by teachers, which is now needed as a result of curriculum change. The teachers involved in the study formed a professional learning community where their learning needs with respect to changes in the statistics curriculum were identified and workshops presented to help meet these needs. In the paper teachers' understanding of new statistical content knowledge and learning experiences are reported. Initial findings support previous research into how teachers learn and show that new content knowledge is not automatically gained through their participation in professional development.