Reasoning about Variation: Student Voice

Chris Reading; Jackie Reid

doi:10.29333/iejme/179

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Chris Reading, Jackie Reid

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Abstract

This paper reports one recent study that was part of a project investigating tertiary students’ understanding of variation. These students completed a questionnaire prior to, and at the end of, an introductory statistics course and this paper focuses on interviews of selected students designed to determine whether more information could have been gathered about the students’ reasoning. Clarification during interviews reinforced researcher interpretation of responses. Prompting assisted students to develop better quality responses but probing was mostly useful for assisting students to re-express reasoning already presented. Cognitive conflict situations proved challenging. The diversity of activities identified by students as assisting the development of their understanding provides a challenge for educators in planning teaching sequences. Both educators and researchers need to listen to students to better understand the development of reasoning.

Keywords

Statistics Education Research
Reasoning About Variation
Interviews
Tertiary Students
Cognitive Conflict

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This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Article Type: Research Article

INT ELECT J MATH ED, Volume 2, Issue 3, October 2007, 110-127

https://doi.org/10.29333/iejme/179

Publication date: 12 Dec 2007

Article Views: 2848

Article Downloads: 2657

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How to cite this article

APA

Reading, C., & Reid, J. (2007). Reasoning about Variation: Student Voice. International Electronic Journal of Mathematics Education, 2(3), 110-127. https://doi.org/10.29333/iejme/179

Vancouver

Reading C, Reid J. Reasoning about Variation: Student Voice. INT ELECT J MATH ED. 2007;2(3):110-27. https://doi.org/10.29333/iejme/179

AMA

Reading C, Reid J. Reasoning about Variation: Student Voice. INT ELECT J MATH ED. 2007;2(3), 110-127. https://doi.org/10.29333/iejme/179

Chicago

Reading, Chris, and Jackie Reid. "Reasoning about Variation: Student Voice". International Electronic Journal of Mathematics Education 2007 2 no. 3 (2007): 110-127. https://doi.org/10.29333/iejme/179

Harvard

Reading, C., and Reid, J. (2007). Reasoning about Variation: Student Voice. International Electronic Journal of Mathematics Education, 2(3), pp. 110-127. https://doi.org/10.29333/iejme/179

MLA

Reading, Chris et al. "Reasoning about Variation: Student Voice". International Electronic Journal of Mathematics Education, vol. 2, no. 3, 2007, pp. 110-127. https://doi.org/10.29333/iejme/179