LEARNING AND TEACHING STOCHASTIC MATHEMATICS IN THE FIRST GRADES OF PRIMARY SCHOOL

PDF (ελληνικά)
Published: Jun 26, 2025
Stavroula Saplamidou
Democritus Uviversity of `Thrace
https://orcid.org/0009-0007-1949-3043
Charalambos Sakonidis
Democritus Uviversity of `Thrace
Abstract

 This article refers to the directions of the new Curriculum in Greece, regarding stochastic mathematics for the early grades of elementary school. After outlining the content of statistical concepts and procedures that young students are supposed to engage with, indicative research findings from the past decade related to students' work in this field are presented. The final section outlines the teaching practices and suggestions that have emerged as beneficial for teaching stochastic topics related to the new Curriculum, based on research in the field of statistics education.

Article Details
  • Section
  • Articles
Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:

Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution licence that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.

Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g. post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.

Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (preferably in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).

 

 
Downloads
Download data is not yet available.
References
Bakker, A., & Gravemeijer, K. P. (2004). Learning to reason about distribution. In The challenge of developing statistical literacy, reasoning and thinking (pp. 147-168). Springer Netherlands.
Ben-Zvi, D. (2006). Scaffolding students’ informal inference and argumentation. In A. Rossman & B. Chance (Eds.), Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Teaching Statistics. Voorburg, The Netherlands: International Statistical Institute.
Ben-Zvi, D. (2018). Foreword. In A. Leavy, M. Meletiou-Mavrotheris, & E. Paparistodemou (Eds.), Statistics in early childhood and primary education: Supporting early statistical and probabilistic thinking (pp. vii-viii). Springer.
Ben-Zvi, D., & Amir, Y. (2005). How do Primary School Students Begin to Reason about Distributions? In K. Makar (Ed.), Reasoning about distribution: A collection of current research studies. Proceedings of the Fourth International Research Forum on Statistical Reasoning, Thinking, and Literacy (SRTL-4), University of Auckland, New Zealand, 2-7 July, 2005. Brisbane: University of Queensland.
Ben-Zvi, D., Aridor, K., Makar, K., & Bakker, A. (2012). Students’ emergent articulations of uncertainty while making informal statistical inferences. ZDM, 44(7), 913-925.
Biehler R., (1994). Probabilistic thinking, statistical reasoning, and the search for causes - Do we need a probabilistic revolution after we have taught data analysis? Revised and extended version of a paper presented at the Fourth International Conference on Teaching Statistics (ICOTS 4), Marrakech, Morocco, 25-30 July 1994
Braham, H. M., & Ben-Zvi, D. (2015). Students’ articulations of uncertainty in informally exploring sampling distributions. Reasoning about uncertainty: Learning and teaching informal inferential reasoning, 57-94.
Garfield, J., & Ben-Zvi, D. (2008). Developing students’ statistical reasoning: Connecting research and teaching practice. Springer Science & Business Media.
English, L. (2014). Establishing statistical foundations early: data modeling with young learners. In Sustainability in statistics education: Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Teaching Statistics (ICOTS9) (pp. 1-6). International Association for Statistical Education (IASE)/International Statistical Institute.
English, L. D. (2023). Linking probability and statistics in young children’s reasoning with chance. Statistics Education Research Journal, 22(2), 7-7.
https://doi.org/10.52041/serj.v22i2.418
Fielding-Wells, J. (2018). Scaffolding Statistical Inquiries for Young Children. In: Leavy, A., Meletiou-Mavrotheris, M., Paparistodemou, E. (eds) Statistics in Early Childhood and Primary Education. Early Mathematics Learning and Development. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-1044-7_7
Gal, I. (2005). Towards" probability literacy" for all citizens: Building blocks and instructional dilemmas. In Exploring probability in school: Challenges for teaching and learning (pp. 39-63). Boston, MA: Springer US.
Garfield, J., & Ben-Zvi, D. (2008). Developing students’ statistical reasoning: Connecting research and teaching practice. Springer Science & Business Media.
Groth, R. E. (2018). Unpacking implicit disagreements among early childhood standards for statistics and probability. In A. Leavy, M. Meletiou-Mavrotheris, & E. Paparistodemou (Eds.), Statistics in early childhood and primary education (pp. 149–162). Springer.
ΙΕΠ (2021). Πρόγραμμα σπουδών για το μάθημα των μαθηματικών στο Δημοτικό, Ινστιτούτο Εκπαιδευτικής Πολιτικής, Αθήνα.
Kazak S., Leavy A.M. (2018) Emergent reasoning about uncertainty in primary school children with a focus on subjective probability. In A. Leavy, M. Meletiou-Mavrotheris& E. Paparistodemou (Eds.), Statistics in earlychildhood and primary education. (pp. 34-54). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-1044-7_3
Kinnear, V. (2018). Initiating Interest in Statistical Problems: The Role of Picture Story Books. In: Leavy, A., Meletiou-Mavrotheris, M., Paparistodemou, E. (eds) Statistics in Early Childhood and Primary Education. Early Mathematics Learning and Development. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-1044-7_11
Konold, C., Higgins, T., Russell, S. J., & Khalil, K. (2015). Data seen through different lenses. Educational Studies in Mathematics, 88(3), 305-325.
Konold, C., & Kazak, S. (2008). Reconnecting data and chance. Technology Innovations in Statistics Education, 2(1).
Konold, C., & Pollatsek, A. (2002). Data analysis as the search for signals in noisy processes. Journal for research in mathematics education, 259-289.
Krummenauer, J., Gutensohn, F., Aichele, J., Emhart, M., & Kuntze, S. (2023, July). Young primary students’ difficulties related to data-based argumentation–a qualitative analysis. In Thirteenth Congress of the European Society for Research in Mathematics Education (CERME13) (No. 16). Alfréd Rényi Institute of Mathematics; ERME.
Leavy, A., & Hourigan, M. (2018). Inscriptional capacities and representations of young children engaged in data collection during a statistical investigation. In A. Leavy, M. Meletiou-Mavrotheris, & E. Paparistodemou (Eds.), Statistics in early childhood and primary education: Supporting early statistical reasoning and probabilistic thinking (pp. 89–108). Springer.
Leavy, A. M., & Sloane, F. (2017). Insights into the approaches of young children when making informal inferences about data. In T. Dooley & G. Gueudet (Eds.), Proceedings of the tenth Congress of the European Society for Research in Mathematics Education (pp. 788–795). DCU Institute of Education and ERME.
Lehrer R., English L. (2018). Introducing children to modeling variability. In Ben-Zvi D., Makar K., Garfield J. (Eds.), International handbook of research in statistics education (pp. 229–260). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66195-7_7
Makar, K. (2014). Young children's explorations of average through informal inferential reasoning. Educational Studies in Mathematics Education, 86, 61-78.
Makar, K. (2016). Developing young children’s emergent inferential practices in statistics. Mathematical Thinking and Learning, 18(1), 1–24. https://doi.org/10.1080/10986065.2016.1107820
Makar, K., Bakker, A.,& Ben-Zvi, D. (2011). The reasoning behind informal statistical inference. Mathematical Thinking and Learning, 13(1-2), 152-173. https://doi.org/10.1080/10986065.2011.538301
Makar, K., & Rubin, A. (2009). A framework for thinking about informal statistical inference. Statistics Education Research Journal, 8(1), 82-105. https://doi.org/10.52041/serj.v8i1.457
Makar, K., & Rubin, A. (2018). Learning about statistical inference. International handbook of research in statistics education, 261-294. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66195-7_8
Nikiforidou, Z. (2018). Probabilistic thinking and young children: Theory and pedagogy. In A. Leavy, M. Meletiou-Mavrotheris, & E. Paparistodemou (Eds.), Statistics in early childhood and primary education. early mathematics learning and development (pp. 21–35). Singapore: Springer.
Oslington, G. (2018). Second-graders’ predictive reasoning strategies. In Proceeding of the 42nd Conference of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education (Vol. 3, pp. 435-442).
Σακονίδης, Χ., Κασσώτη, Ό., Καφούση, Σ., Κλιάπης, Π., Κλώθου, Ά., Λάτση, Μ., Τριανταφυλλίδης, Τ. (2022). Οδηγός εκπαιδευτικού Μαθηματικών Δημοτικού. 2η Έκδοση, Ινστιτούτο Εκπαιδευτικής Πολιτικής, Αθήνα.
Weiland, T. (2017). Problematizing statistical literacy: An intersection of critical and statistical literacies. Educational Studies in Mathematics, 96(1), 33-47. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10649-017-9764-5
Wild, C. J., &Pfannkuch, M. (1999). Statistical thinking in empirical enquiry. International statistical review, 67(3), 223-248.
Wild, C. J., Utts, J. M., & Horton, N. J. (2018). What is statistics? In D. Ben-Zvi, K. Makar, & J. Garfield (Eds.), International handbook of research in statistics education (pp. 5–36). Springer.
Zapata Cardona, L. (2023). The role of contexts in supporting early statistical reasoning in data modeling.Statistics Education Research Journal,22(2), 5-5. https://doi.org/10.52041/serj.v22i2.448
Most read articles by the same author(s)