PME Stochastics Teaching and Learning Working Group

Letter No 4 - February 1997

Dear Friends

We have considered the responses we have had from the Working Group Members, and are preparing a document to form part of the PME Proceedings which will define our activities fairly precisely. Item A is a draft of what we shall send to the organisers on 20 Feb 97. If you have any comments, please let one of us have them by 15 Feb 97.

Items B - D are concerned with our project for Finland (and perhaps beyond). Your comments and offers to contribute are invited as soon as possible. Item E is the timetable for our Finland meetings.

Members of this Working Group are reminded that their contributions are still very welcome even if they cannot come to Finland.

Item A - Draft for PME21 Booklet

Stochastics teaching and learning is a growing field of research with important implications for classroom practice. This growth is likely to continue. During 1996/97 three major chapters or books related to this work are being published—on assessment, data analysis and probability learning. In recent years, several major bibliographies have been prepared, of which some have been made public and some have only private circulation.

It is the rapidly expanding literature in the field which is not being codified and so provides a formidable hurdle for new researchers to overcome before they undertake their own work. Furthermore, the work of some researchers who do not write in English is not reaching many workers.

This working group plans to develop a short annotated bibliography of about 200 critical papers which will be able to serve as a starting point for entering the literature, and as a companion to the three major chapters.

Members of the working group, including those who are not attending the conference, will be asked to prepare a short list of what they see as the 20 most critical papers in their field and the Working Group sessions will be devoted to moulding this material into a unified whole.

Item B - Plans for Building up the Bibliography

Our aim for 1997/98 is to produce an annotated bibliography of the stochastics research literature which will provide new and present workers with a bench-mark for sorting through what has become a massive amount of data. We hope that this will enable research to move forward more quickly and to be built on a well-established set of useful research.

A first step will be to list major bibliographies which are readily accessible. This is a list of major current Bibliographies that we know of. Additions to this list would be appreciated. Some of these are more accessible than others, and we need to indicate how these might be easily obtained.

Andy Begg and Sashi Sharma (NZ) - 1 disk, partly annotated.

Joan Garfield (USA)- Stat-file.

Sahai, Khurshid & Misra Journal of Statistical Education Vol 4 ( 1) - list

of references

Becker (1996) Journal of Education & Behavioral Statistics 21 (1)

Mike Shaughnessy - in Grouws -- Handbook of Teaching and Learning

Mathematics.

Shaughnessy et al. Chapter on <Data handling> in Bishop et al (eds)

International Handbook of mathematics Education (Kluwer)

Borovcnik & Peard Chapter on <Probability> in the same book

Garfield & Gal Handbook on Assessment in Statistics

John Truran - printouts from a major ERIC search on probability

Several Theses

Several Books

Borovcnik & Kapadia

Hawkins et al.

NCTM 1981 Yearbook

Additional Sources of references include

Proceedings of Conferences

ICOTS

IASE

PME

MERGA

Journals

Teaching Statistics

Journal of Statistics Education

Induzione

Newsletters of the International Study Group

Zentralblatt fur Didaktik der Mathematik

Dissertation Abstracts International

Annual Issue of JRME

There is a lot of literature in French, German and Spanish which does not reach the English-speaking workers, although the English literature does usually reach the other language groups.

Item C - Building a List of Critical Literature.

We are going to ask members to prepare an annotated list of up to 20 papers of what they see as being really important papers in their field.

A standard format will be prepared to assist in this which will require a brief summary of the content of the paper, and also an assessment of the applicability of the results.

Members will also be asked to contribute an annotated list of their most important papers in the field in the same form.

If you would like to be involved (whether you are coming to Finland or not) please let us know as soon as possible. and tell us what areas you are best able to comment on. The main sections will be those for the subgroups of the Working Group: Relating Research with Practice; Statistical Concepts in Schools; Statistical Concepts in Tertiary; Probability Concepts. However, you may wish to concentrate on some small sub-group. We will then try to spread the load over the whole area, and write back to you asking you to prepare a list in such and such an area.

Item D - Some Personal Views of what this List might Achieve

Some views by John Truran for debate.

In a growing field like stochastics learning, new researchers have quite a battle to find where to start. Summary chapters help, but new researchers have to go back to the original documents. A critical bibliography might achieve some of the following:

It would ensure that articles not written in English stay in the

research domain.

It would ensure that good work which has been overlooked is

brought back into the research domain.

It would make it clear which sets of papers form part of which

specific debates.

It would point out which papers contained the resolution of

debates, so that new workers only needed to go to the concluding

paper.

It would provide an indication of the content and conclusions

of individual papers in an efficient way.

It would provide an opportunity to place a pedagogical

interpretation on research papers, and thus make them more

accessible to teachers.

Further comments on this list will be welcome.

Item E - Programme for the Four Working Group Meetings at Lahti will be:

1. General Meeting

General Introductions

Summary of some recent non-PME work

Outline of relevant papers being presented at PME

Brief self-introductions round the group including

current research

and recent findings

Distribution of Hand-Outs from members

Outline of Plans for Working Group

Special Issues to be Discussed

Form of presentation of literature summary

Allocation of Sub-Groups

2. Working Meeting for Sub-Groups

Suggested Sub-Groups

Relating Research with Practice

Statistical Concepts in Schools

Statistical Concepts in Tertiary

This may link with the Advanced Mathematical

Thinking Working Group

Probability Concepts

3. Working Meeting for Sub-Groups

4. General Meeting

Reports from Sub-Groups

Discussion on Reports

Discussion on Future Plans

Item F - Miscellaneous Notes

More information on PME can be obtained from the Conference Secretary:

Marja-Liisa Neuvonen (marja-liisa.neuvonen@helsinki.fi)

or from internet: http://frodo.helsinki.fi/congress/

Correction -- We incorrectly reported that Anne Hawkins had been doing work with children. Her research on probability concepts is with adults, including a number of trainee lawyers.

Initial -- Some of this list has a lot of abbreviations and acronyms in it. We think most people on this list know what they stand for, but if you don’t please reply to John Truran, and he will decode them for you.

We hope to send the next newsletter out in early April. If you have any special issues to raise, please contact one of us by 25 Mar97

Carmen Batanero <batanero@goliat.ugr.es>

Kath Truran <Kath.Truran@unisa.edu.au>

John Truran <jtruran@arts.adelaide.edu.au>