Establishing sociomathematical norms in statistics teaching in lower-secondary classrooms
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.52041/serj.860Keywords:
Statistics education, Statistical literacy, Sociomathematical norms, Classroom researchAbstract
Because digital technologies and collection of data about our lives are omnipresent in our society, statistics has become an increasingly important school subject. In this article, we investigate the development of statistical literacy in a class of middle school students over the course of a one-year case study. Previously, the students tended to work procedurally with statistics, but during the study, they increasingly engaged in questioning statistical information, justifying statistical interpretations, and communicating data-based claims about issues within and beyond their school context. We take a social constructivist perspective and analyse which sociomathematical norms related to statistical literacy emerged during the classroom interactions. We identified two such norms—what counts as a valuable description of a data set and what counts as a valuable answer to a statistical investigation—that connected classroom interactions with the aim of supporting students’ development of statistical literacy, especially its dispositional elements. The study contributes a rare empirical exploration of how to support students’ development of statistical literacy at the classroom level.
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