During the period 1991 to 1993 a new junior high school curriculum was introduced in many South African schools. This curriculum is fairly strongly constructivist in design. A study of probability was included for the first time in any ordinary South African curriculum, this being at the Standard 7 (Grade 9) level. The approach is initially experimental but continues into the more formal presentation in terms of sample spaces. This situation presented the researchers with an opportunity of looking at the unschooled understanding of probability concepts amongst South African children before the curriculum was actually implemented. Data were also collected once some of the children had been taught about probability according to the new curriculum. It was anticipated that analysis of results would enable the researchers to identify prevalent misconceptions; to ascertain the effects of the reaching of probability according to the new curriculum; to compare the intuitive understanding of various groups (male and female, urban and rural); to offer suggestions for teaching on the basis of the findings and to compare the intuitive understanding of South African children with that of children from other countries such as Britain, Canada and Brazil. In this paper we look at the pre- and post-testing done in a selection of schools in the Johannesburg region and, for the Johannesburg and Umtata samples, present an innovative analysis of data from a selection of items from the instrument used.
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