PME-NA

How Are Students Thinking about Data and Graphing? Findings from Pre- and Post-Instruction Assessments

• In Event: Mathematical Meaning

Description

Engaging with authentic data across all steps of the data investigation process – including collecting, processing, exploring, and visualizing data – is a critical skill set to build in K-12 students. Understanding the challenges students encounter throughout this process is key to offering instructional support to deepen their understanding and prepare students for navigating a data-rich world. Preliminary results from a pre-instructional Data Assessment survey, now in its second iteration, indicate students (n = 324 from 10 classrooms) hold conflicting assessments of what “counts” as data depending on whether data examples are presented in text or visual form. Furthermore, many students exhibit a “mold in mind” approach to data visualization, essentially eliminating the exploratory phase of investigating their data prior to graphing.

Authors

• Christina Siddons, University of Maine

• Franziska Peterson, University of Maine