ERIC Number: EJ1093103
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2013
Pages: 5
Abstractor: ERIC
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0045-0685
EISSN: N/A
Using Statistics to Explore Cross-Curricular and Social Issues Opportunities
Day, Lorraine
Australian Mathematics Teacher, v69 n4 p3-7 2013
The area of statistics is one in which teachers may be encouraged to make important links to other curriculum areas and social issues. Statistical literacy is a key component of being numerate and living as an informed citizen. The teaching of statistics provides an opportunity to inform and educate students about social issues and moral behaviour, as well as reinforcing the links between mathematics and other areas of study. The "Australian Curriculum: Mathematics" (ACM) (ACARA, 2013b) states "Mathematics is composed of multiple but interrelated and interdependent concepts and systems which students apply beyond the mathematics classroom" (p. 1). In no other area is this so pronounced as in the Statistics and Probability Strand. When designing a fourth year pre-service teacher unit on teaching Statistics and Probability, while still covering all of the big ideas of statistics and probability, it was decided to make the cross-curricular and social issues a focus of the unit. In this way it was hoped to model an approach that the students could use in their future classrooms. Many of the tasks used were derived from Maths300 (Williams & Lovitt, 2010) and "Digging Into Australian Data With TinkerPlots" (Watson et al., 2011). Both of these resources made use of software that enabled probability simulations and used dynamic data analysis tools which allowed the reinforcement of the fundamental connections between statistics and probability while encouraging informal statistical inference (Flavel, 2013; Konold & Kazak, 2008; Konold & Miller, 2004). A selection of the tasks used within the unit, which translate directly into a secondary school classroom, are described in this article.
Descriptors: Social Problems, Statistics, Foreign Countries, Mathematics, Mathematics Instruction, Mathematics Teachers, Probability, Mathematics Curriculum, Statistical Analysis, Correlation, Statistical Inference, Moral Values, Child Behavior, Secondary School Mathematics
Australian Association of Mathematics Teachers (AAMT). GPO Box 1729, Adelaide 5001, South Australia. Tel: +61-8-8363-0288; Fax: +61-8-8362-9288; e-mail: office@aamt.edu.au; Web site: http://www.aamt.edu.au
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Descriptive
Education Level: Secondary Education
Audience: Teachers
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Asia; Australia
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A