The sociocultural perspective draws attention to students' development of a sense of who they are in relation to statistics as an integral aspect of their learning. This focus on students' construction of identities as doers of statistics relates directly to a number of issues that are of immediate concern to most teachers including students' interest in and motivations for studying statistics. We present the results of a classroom design experiment in which a group of 12-year-old students developed identities as people who chose to engage in, saw value in, and viewed themselves as competent at developing data-based arguments. We also discuss aspects of the design experiment that appeared to play an important role in supporting the students' development of these positive orientations towards statistics.
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