297x Filetype PDF File size 0.73 MB Source: iase-web.org
Statistics Education
Research Journal
Volume 1 Number 2 December 2002
Editors
Carmen Batanero
Flavia Jolliffe
Associate Editors
Iddo Gal
Joan B. Garfield
David R. Green
Annie Morin
M. Gabriella Ottaviani
Christine Reading
Richard L. Scheaffer
Chris Wild
International Association For Statistical Education
http://www.cbs.nl/isi/iase.htm
International Statistical Institute
http://www.cbs.nl/isi
Statistics Education Research Journal
The Statistics Education Research Journal is published jointly by the International Association for Statistical
Education and the International Statistical Institute to:
• encourage research activity in statistics education;
• advance knowledge about students’ attitudes, conceptions, and difficulties as regards stochastic knowledge;
• improving the teaching of statistics at all educational levels.
It encourages the submission of quality papers, including research reports, theoretical or methodological
analyses, literature surveys, thematic bibliographies, summaries of research papers and dissertations.
Contributions in English are recommended. Contributions in French and Spanish will also be accepted. All the
papers will be refereed.
ISSN: 1570-1824
Editors
Carmen Batanero, Departamento de Didáctica de las Matemáticas, Facultad de Ciencias de la Educación,
Universidad de Granada, Granada 18071, Spain. E-mail: batanero@.ugr.es
Flavia R. Jolliffe, Institute of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Kent at Canterbury, Canterbury, Kent, CT2
7NF, United Kingdom. Email:frjolliffe@yahoo.co.uk
Associate Editors
Iddo Gal, Department of Human Services, University of Haifa, Eshkol Tower, Room 718,Haifa 31905, Israel.
E-mail: iddo@research.haifa.ac.il
Joan B. Garfield, Educational Psychology, 315 Burton Hall, 178 Pillsbury Drive, S.E.,Minneapolis, MN 55455,
USA . Email: jbg@umn.edu
David R. Green, Associate Dean, Faculty of Science, Loughborough University, Loughborough LE11 3TU, United
Kingdom. E-mail: D.R.Green@lboro.ac.uk
Annie Morin, Institut de Recherche en Informatique et Systèmes Aléatoires, Université de Rennes 1, F35042
Rennes Cedex, France. E-mail amorin@irisa.fr
M. Gabriella Ottaviani, Dipartimento di Statistica Probabilitá e Statistiche Applicate, Universitá degli Studi di Roma
"La Sapienza",P.le Aldo Moro, 5, 00185, Rome, Italy. E-mail: mariagabriella.ottaviani@uniroma1.it
Christine Reading, School of Education, Faculty of Education, Health and Professional Studies, University of New
England, Armidale, NSW 2351, Australia. E-mail: creading@metz.une.edu.au
Richard L. Scheaffer, Department of Statistics University of Florida, 907 NW 21 Terrace, Gainesville, FL 32603,
USA. E-mail: scheaffe@stat.ufl.edu
Chris Wild, Department of Statistics, University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland, New Zealand. Email:
wild@stat.auckland.ac.nz
Submissions
Manuscripts should be sent to Flavia Jolliffe, by e-mail (frjolliffe@yahoo.co.uk), as an attached document, in rtf
format. Two files are required. In one of them the author’s name, affiliation and references to the author(s)’
previous work should be removed to ensure anonymity in the reviewing process. Manuscripts should conform to
the style specified at the Journal website: http://fehps.une.edu.au/serj
International Association for Statistical Education
President: Carmen Batanero (Spain)
President-Elect: Chris Wild ( New Zealand)
Past-President: Brian Phillips (Australia)
Vice-Presidents: Dani Ben-Zvi (Israel), Carol Joyce Blumberg (USA), Lisbeth Cordani (Brazil), Gilberte Schuyten
(Belgium), Susan Starkings (UK)
Co-opted members: Gail Burrill (USA), Delia North (South Africa), Maria-Gabriella Ottaviani (Italy)
1
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Editorial 2
New Associate Editors 3
Maxine Pfannkuch and Amanda Rubick. An Exploration of Students’ Statistical Thinking with Given 4
Data
Maria Meletiou-Mavrotheris and Carl Lee. Teaching Students the Stochastic Nature of Statistical 22
Concepts in an Introductory Statistics Course
Beth L. Chance and Joan B. Garfield. New Approaches to Gathering Data on Student Learning for 38
Research in Statistics Education
Nigel Smeeton. Undergraduate Courses in Dental Statistics in Britain and Ireland 45
Peter Holmes. Some Basic References for the Teaching of Undergraduate Statistics 49
ICOTS-6 Report
1. Report from the International Programme Committee Executive 54
2. Report from the Local Organisers 56
3. The Honourable Trevor Manuel, Minister of Finance South Africa. Opening Address 57
4. Summary of Plenary Sessions 61
5. Summaries of Topic Sessions 62
Recent Publications 75
Recent Dissertations 81
Information on Past Conferences 84
Forthcoming Conferences 88
Statistics Education Research Journal Referees January-November, 2002 91
2
EDITORIAL
Welcome to the second issue of the Statistics Education Research Journal (SERJ)! We hope that you agree
that it was worth waiting for.
If you have looked at the first issue you know that it was not so very different from the Statistics Education
Research Newsletter (SERN), partly because it included material which had already been prepared for SERN. In
this issue, in line with the statement on the SERJ web page (http://fehps.une.edu.au/serj) that papers submitted to
SERJ are peer-reviewed by referees selected by the editors, we are pleased to publish four papers which have
been refereed both by an associate editor and two external referees. The paper by Beth Chance and Joan
Garfield makes an important contribution to the methodology of obtaining data on how students develop an
understanding of statistics. This is complemented by a paper by Maxine Pfannkuch and Amanda Rubick that is
concerned with a study of students’ statistical thinking, and a paper by Maria Meletiou and Carl Lee about a study
of students’ reasoning. The fourth paper, by Nigel Smeeton, is a little different and describes research into
statistics courses given to dental students.
We are, however, retaining some of the features of SERN in SERJ, so this issue includes a useful
bibliography of references for teaching undergraduate statistics that was prepared by Peter Holmes, and, with an
emphasis on statistical education research, summaries of publications, and information about recent
dissertations, and about past and forthcoming conferences. We feel that these sections are valuable to the
statistics education research community.
We are pleased to report that we are receiving a steady flow of papers and that currently there are several
papers either being refereed or revised. This has encouraged us to increase the size of the editorial board and we
were delighted that, in spite of their many other commitments, Joan Garfield, Dick Scheaffer, David Green, and
Iddo Gal all accepted our invitation to become associate editors. They are all well known in the statistical
education world. In particular, Joan started the newsletter which has evolved over time to become SERJ and she
must be one of the most cited statistical education researchers, Dick has served as a vice-president of IASE and
has been very active in the American Statistical Association, David was one of the first to undertake a large-scale
study into the probabilistic understanding of school children and the questions he devised have since been used
by many others, and Iddo is heavily involved with the international Adult Literacy and Lifeskills survey. You can
find more details about these new associate editors later in this issue. Details of all members of the editorial board
are on the web page, including an update for Flavia Jolliffe who has retired from the University of Greenwich but
continues to be active in many professional activities.
The sixth International Conference on the Teaching of Statistics, ICOTS6, was held in Cape Town, South
Africa, in July, twenty years after the first ICOTS in Sheffield in the UK. The second to fifth conferences were held
in Victoria (Canada), Dunedin (New Zealand), Marrakesh (Morocco), and Singapore respectively. The seventh
ICOTS will be held in Brazil in 2006. It was good to meet so many people active in statistical education at
ICOTS6, and we were especially pleased that the attendance at the open meeting of SERJ was well supported in
spite of the early hour. Many useful suggestions were made at this meeting and we would like to thank those who
offered their help. You will be hearing from us if we have not already approached you! There is a full report on
ICOTS6 in this issue, including the opening address given by South Africa’s Minister of Finance, the Honorable
Trevor Manuel. We are extremely pleased that he has agreed that we may reproduce this.
SERJ is still under development and the editorial board has been very busy behind the scenes, for example
discussing the refereeing process and the guidelines for authors. Here we should like to take the opportunity to
mention that Carol Joyce Blumberg, the IASE vice-president with responsibility for IASE publications, keeps a
watchful eye on the email exchanges between members of the editorial board and makes helpful interventions.
We value her input. Just as we were about to go to press we received the news that the Executive Committee
and Council of the ISI have approved our request that SERJ is to be a joint publication of the ISI and the IASE.
The IASE executive has decided that access to SERJ should continue to be free to all until the journal is well
known. The IASE is paying the cost of hiring a student to help Associate editor Chris Reading, who looks after the
Website, prepare the final version of each issue. We are very grateful to Chris for these contributions to the
success of SERJ. We urge you to join IASE if you are not already a member. This will be an indication of your
support for its activities and enable you to play a full part in these. Please also tell others about IASE. The web
address is http://www.cbs.nl/isi/iase.htm
FLAVIA JOLLIFFE and CARMEN BATANERO
no reviews yet
Please Login to review.