Literature Index

This chapter reviews the research on what students know (and do not know) about probability and chance and the role of technology in fostering students' understanding of probability, specifically in the connection between randomness, the law of large numbers and the notion of distribution. Implications for pedagogy is considered.

The purpose of this study was to examine how group composition and gender influences the learning of statistics for eighth grade mathematics students. Students participated in an extended grup project where they designed a research question, collected, analyzed, and interpreted data using the computer. Same-gender mixed ability groups were randomly assigned to two exemplar conditions (text vs. video and text). Assessment criteria were described to students prior to their project development through exemplar conditions, video and text was thought to be more explict. An Analysis of Variance of Condition (text or text and video) by Gender (male or female) by Test (pre, post) revealed no condition effect, but females performed higher than males on a post-test of statistical knowledge. Gender differences were also noted in journal keeping. Implications of these results are discussed.

In most countries at the secondary school level, the statistics curriculum is a part of the mathematics curriculum. If we have a look at the papers on statistical education at the college or at the university published ten years ago, we can see that the requirements are practically adaptable to the actual secondary level. With the changes occurring in mathematical education at the secondary school level, with the development of interdisciplinary class projects especially for higher grades (9-12), with the increasing availability of computers at school, the teaching of statistics has changed. But first, we have to define the objective or more precisely the objectives, then the ways to get them and conclude with the limits and their reasons of the approach.