Search

Although statistics is widely taught in high school and universities in many countries, the current teaching does not help student develop a complete understanding of many concepts. In this paper, we focus on the ideas of correlation and regression, which expand functional dependence and are the base of many other statistical concepts. We describe the main difficulties in understanding these concepts identified in the literature, analyse the components of statistical sense for the case of correlation and regression and suggest some ideas to improve the teaching of this topic.

Since probability is a new topic at the primary school level in many countries, many primary school teachers may consider themselves not well prepared, or may not value the formative role of probability as a topic for their students to learn. Consequently, the assessment of teachers’ attitudes using valid and reliable instruments is a preliminary step in organizing formative actions for these teachers. In this paper, we describe the development of a scale aimed at measuring primary school teachers’ attitudes towards probability and the teaching of probability. The components considered in building the instrument, the process of selecting the items, as well as the results of a pilot trial of the instrument are presented. The validity and reliability of the instrument are also discussed, and the preliminary results of a second sample of 232 prospective teachers in Spain is analysed. Our results suggest that future teachers’ attitudes towards probability and its teaching are generally positive in all of the components considered.

The compulsory university entrance tests in Andalucia (Spain), which traditionally include a probability problem, often determine whether the student is admitted to study in his or her desired university program. Consequently, it is important to ensure that the content of the test is directly related to the content included in the high school curriculum. The aim of this research was to investigate the distribution of the main variables characterizing the probability problems posed in these tests in Andalucia. Specifically, we examined all the problems posed to students in the period 2003–2014 (n = 144 problems). We considered the following variables: type of experiment and sample space considered, type of probability that should be computed, theorems or properties needed to find the solution, format of the data, and context. The results of the analysis reveal the potential difficulty of the problems, as well as the relevance given to conditional probability in the tests, in comparison to other curricular contents.