This paper reports partial outcomes from a three-year project that provided professional learning opportunities in mathematics for middle school teachers in rural schools in Tasmania. The educational environment for the study was one of significant system transition. Student change is reported here and was measured with survey instruments…

This paper reports on students' experiences of describing and representing variation in hypothetical data. Fifty-six students (8-9 years-old) experienced collecting and working with quantitative data for two years as part of a STEM education project. The task described here was an end-of-year survey question, with three parts about a hypothetical…

It is increasingly recognised that to be informed citizens and to participate fully in the workforce requires an understanding of statistical data and risk. Such understanding is underpinned by statistical reasoning. It has been shown, however, that students have difficulty moving from concrete representations and procedural mathematical…

This paper reports on the potential for engaging students in an activity that considers the interconnectedness of the five Big Ideas of Statistics in the context of conducting random trials. In the study, two classes of Year 6 students (aged 11-12 years) used "TinkerPlots" to determine the sample space of a "Mystery Spinner."…

Statistical terms are used in everyday language and, at times, used in non-statistical ways. It is often assumed students understand statistical terms because of their common use; however, research into their understanding of specific statistical terms is scant. This report focuses on 58 Year 3 students' responses to the basic question, "What…

This study reports on the capabilities of 53 Year 4 students as they completed the final stages of their first complete statistical investigation. In the context of becoming acquainted with students in a sister school in another city, students in both schools wrote and refined questions, which were answered by all students in an on-line survey.…

The Australian Curriculum: Mathematics calls for the concurrent development of mathematical skills and mathematical reasoning. What are the big ideas of mathematical reasoning and is it possible to map their learning trajectories? Using rich assessment tasks designed for middle-years students of mathematics, this symposium reports on the…

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the publication of a "National Statement on Mathematics for Australian Schools", which was the first curriculum statement this country had including "Chance and Data" as a significant component. It is hence an opportune time to survey the history of the related statistics education…

Responses of 223 students in grades 6 to 11 to questions related to beliefs about getting out of bed on the left side are analysed from two perspectives. On one hand the items explore subjective beliefs about chance. On the other hand the different wording and context of the items provide opportunity to show different levels of understanding of…

Students explored variation and expectation in a probability activity at the end of the first year of a 3-year longitudinal study across grades 4-6. The activity involved experiments in tossing coins both manually and with simulation using the graphing software, "TinkerPlots." Initial responses indicated that the students were aware of…

This paper addresses one of the foundational components of beginning interference, namely variation, with 5 classes of Year 4 students undertaking a measurement activity using scaled instruments in two contexts: all students measuring one person's arm span and recording the values obtained, and each student having his/her own arm span measured and…

This paper considers the responses of 26 teachers to items exploring their pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) about the concept of average. The items explored teachers' knowledge of average, their planning of a unit on average, and their understanding of students as learners in devising remediation for two student responses to a problem. Results…

Teachers now require high levels of statistical literacy in order to take advantage of the many statistical reports analysing assessment data that are provided by system authorities. In this report 16 items from the Attitudes and Statistical Literacy Instrument (ASLI) are used with 704 teachers to provide a hierarchical scale of teacher ability to…

This paper analyses the responses of 247 middle school students to items requiring the concept of average in three different contexts: a city's weather reported in maximum daily temperature, the number of children in a family, and the price of houses. The mixed but overall disappointing performance on the six items in the three contexts indicates…