Developing statistical literacy: Student learning and teacher education
- Universidade de Lisboa - Instituto de Educação(líder)
- Universidade de Évora(parceiro)
Summary
Recent international and national mathematics curriculum guidelines indicate the development of students’ statistical literacy, at different levels of schooling, as a major educational aim. This is a challenging situation for practicing teachers, requiring them to develop new perspectives and professional knowledge. In this context, our main goal in the project Developing Statistical Literacy: Student Learning and Teacher Education has been to construct knowledge about the development of statistical literacy, from pre-school to secondary education, with two foci: (i) to characterize key aspects of students’ statistical literacy, particularly as regards the ability to formulate questions, collect and represent data to answer these questions, and the possibilities and constraints for their development, and (ii) to understand the development of teachers’ statistical and didactical knowledge needed to teach this subject, namely to promote students’ statistical literacy.
Goals, activities and expected/achieved results
From this major goal we established five more specific objectives for the project: (a) to characterize students’ statistical literacy, through the planning and development of teaching experiments in classrooms at different school levels, based on sequences of tasks and the use of specific technological tools; (b) to identify possibilities and constraints in the development of students’ statistical literacy, in the context of teaching experiments in classrooms at different school levels; (c) to characterize the statistical and didactical knowledge needed to teach statistics focused on developing statistical literacy; (d) to promote practicing and prospective teachers’ professional knowledge concerning the teaching of statistical literacy, through different teacher education courses and professional development settings; (e) to disseminate the project’s results concerning the development of student’s statistical literacy.
