Refining a Framework on Middle School Students' Statistical Thinking.

The purpose of this paper was to refine an existing cognitive framework designed to characterize middle school students' statistical thinking. A casestudy analysis was used to focus on two sub-processes of statistical thinking that were not adequately represented in the framework: students' use of multiplicative reasoning in analyzing data, and categorizing and grouping data. Twelve students, 4 from each of grades 6-8, were interviewed using a protocol comprised of 4 tasks designed to assess students' thinking across 4 levels: idiosyncratic, transitional, quantitative and analytical. Based on an analysis of the interview data, descriptors were developed for each of the 4 levels of statistical thinking for both of the sub-processes. These sub-processes will be merged with Mooney's framework and the refined framework will be validated in a future study. (Author) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document.