Dear friends,

There were two meetings of the Discussion Group on the Teaching and Learning of Probability and Statistics at the PME Conference in Valencia in Jul 1996. About 40 people attended the first meeting, and more than 20 the second. These numbers reflected the growing interest in this topic.

Both meetings were very happy affairs: the pre-arranged speakers from many countries kept to their time allocation, and many others had an opportunity to make a brief presentation or ask questions. Given the constraints of time it really was a group where discussion was possible, and a number of people were able to make contacts with others. The only major language group which did not contribute was German, even though there are a number of workers in stochastics in Germanic speaking countries.

As well as the short talks which were advertised before the meeting, Anna Maria Ojeda from Mexico gave a presentation concerned with her work on students’ understanding of probability concepts.

At the end of the second meeting a proposal to establish a Working Group was put to the people present by Carmen Batanero (Granada, Spain), Kath Truran & John Truran (Adelaide, South Australia). Some helpful modifications were suggested, particularly by Kath Hart, who had started the Discussion Group going in 1994, and a revised submission was put to the Executive Committee of PME. This has been accepted, and we have been reminded to focus on research, and to work together during the year, and to take account of changing membership in terms of conference attendance.

The purpose of the Working Group is to provide a focus for research which some people might like to contribute to. If appropriate it might lead to a publication of substance in 3 - 4 years. The intention is to use time at PME meetings each year to look at work which has been done during the year, but there is no intention to restrict involvement to PME members. E-mail now permits a much wider involvement of people who cannot attend conferences on a regular basis, and it also makes it easier for different language groups to work together. We hope to involve as many people as possible.

The following is the text of the relevant parts of the submission.

Proposal for a Working Group in Probability and Statistics

1. There already exists an International Study Group for Research on Learning Probability and Statistics. This keeps members up to date through an electronic bulletin board managed by Carmen Batanero. There are about 150 members from 24 countries and others are joining the group as a result of attending the 1996 PME Discussion Group and the ICME topic group 9. Currently this Study Group acts mainly as a medium for communication. We recommend the development of a PME Working Group to act as a focus for developing psychological research and its educational implications through this Study Group and for encouraging new researchers. We also aim to provide a more effective medium for communicating across language groups.

2. Much of the current research done by members is related to psychological aspects of learning probability and statistics, especially intuition, misconceptions, and its implications in designing teaching practices likely to encourage useful construction of stochastic knowledge. Recently, some workers are also moving towards building up comprehensive frameworks that serve to establish theoretical and methodological foundations for research.

3. There are three issues that the Working Group might initially address.

(a) Because work in this field has increased substantially in recent years there is a need to use current summaries to produce a reasonable agenda for research.

(b) The amount of research which has already been done is probably sufficient to warrant the production of a book addressing major issues, particularly the relationship between research and teaching practice, in what is a relatively new topic in primary and secondary curricula.

(a) Aspects of this Working Group's agenda overlap with those of the Advanced Mathematical Thinking Working Group. We may have something to contribute to the book which that Group is planning, and have agreed to co-operate with David Reid as appropriate.

Action To Take if You Want to be Involved

We are sending out this letter to all members of the Probability and Statistics e-mail list. Interested members are asked for replies on two matters:

(a) your name and e-mail address if you want to be kept involved in this working group (this does not commit you to attending next PME conference).

(b) comments on what you think might be done in any or all of these three areas, together with some indication of what you see as the priorities and what you might be able to contribute.

Could we please have responses by 30 Sep 96? You can reply directly to Carmen, who will pass on replies to Kath and will start building up a list of people interested in becoming members of the working group. By October the 15th we shall collate the responses and get in touch with interested members to discuss our next steps. We want this to be a genuinely international working group. If you feel more comfortable replying in a language other than English, then can try to translate short responses (say, up to 20 lines) for the benefit of others. For the moment we can translate from Spanish, French, Italian or Portuguese. People offering to translate from others languages would be very welcome, as out aim is to suppress as many language barriers as possible.

Carmen Batanero - batanero@goliat.ugr.es

Kath Truran - Kath.Truran@unisa.edu.au

John Truran - jtruran@arts.adelaide.edu.au