The purpose of the study reported herein was to identify important aspects of statistical knowledge needed for teaching in the middle school grades. A systematic study of the current literature, including state and national standards, was conducted to identify these important aspects and to measure the degree of emphasis or importance suggested for the content. Results show that state and national standards differ greatly in their expectations of what topics in data analysis and statistics students and teachers should master. The variation is also large in the degree of emphasis given to the content. The majority of the documents analyzed suggest giving greater emphasis to the selection and proper use of graphical data representation and measures of center and spread. Additionally teachers' standards also suggest as important the proper selection and use of teaching strategies and inference of students' understanding from their work and discourse.
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