Literature Index

Those familiar with a statistical package are often surprised at how long it takes a novice to accomplish even a simple task. In a college environment, students often complain about the countless hours spent on a simple assignment. An examination of their computer printouts and written work often fails to reveal where the students spent their hours. Unfortunately, it is possible for students to understand conceptually what to do but still not be able to do it. In an effort to learn where students actually ran into difficulty and discover more about the types of mistakes they were making, we undertook a series of experiments at Babson College. These experiments involved two instructors each teaching two sections of an applied statistics course. There were 154 undergraduate students in these four sections. an extensive set of references dealing with this area may be found in Kopcso, McKenzie, and Rybolt (1985). References to our past work and another recent article are present at the end of this paper.

The aims of this project, sponsored by the Social Science Research Council from November 1978 to October 1981, were: a) to survey the intuitions of chance and the concepts of probability possessed by English school pupils aged 11 to 16 years. b) to establish patterns of development of probability concepts and to relate these to other mathematics concepts. c) to investigate pupil responses to GCE 'O' Level and CSE probability items, with particular references to sex differences. A summary of findings is presented, based on responses of 2930 children.

The Turkish system of education is undergoing great structural changes. The centralized system is becoming more flexible, giving schools and students the opportunity to develop and select new courses based on the needs and interests of the students and the environment at the secondary level. Statistics appears for the first time as a separate four-hour per week elective course in the secondary programs. The changes require the development of new curricula on different subject areas and the revision of the present curricula. The mathematics curricula at all grade levels (K-11) have been revised by the National Mathematics Curriculum Development Committee established by the Ministry of Education in February 1990 and the revised curricula are being implemented in the 1991-92 school year. The place of statistics has not changed much in the revised mathematics curricula. Being a member of the above mentioned Committee, the researcher has observed that the mathematicians and the mathematics teachers do not seem to consider statistics as an area to be taught in mathematics. They mainly concentrate on algebra and geometry. It can easily be concluded that since those people do not have the necessary background and training in statistics, they view statistics topics, which interfere with their conception of mathematics, critically. Many modes of teaching and interpretation which are particular to statistics, as compared to traditional mathematics, are viewed skeptically by the mathematicians and the mathematics teachers. Considering the above situation, the researcher undertook a survey of the place of statistics in general education in Turkey. The results of this study show that the mathematics teachers who are presently responsible for teaching statistical topics at the primary and secondary levels do not have necessary background in statistics and do not possess the necessary skills for teaching statistics.

Much teacher training has been carried out in China since the new curriculum reform began in 2001. By analyzing a particular case of teacher training, this paper reveals how the Chinese government has organized teacher training since 2001 and shows the merits and shortcomings of this approach. The aim of the paper is to share our experiences in mass teacher training and encourage other researchers to explore their own effective approaches.