Inferential Reasoning of Secondary School Mathematics Teachers on the Chi-Square Statistic

Abstract

Statistics education has investigated how to promote formal inferential reasoning from informal inferential reasoning. Nevertheless, there is still a need for proposals that explore and progressively develop inferential reasoning of students and teachers. Concerning this, the objective of this article is to characterize the inferential reasoning that secondary school mathematics teachers show in the practices that they develop to solve problems regarding the Chi-square statistic. To achieve this, we use theoretical and methodological notions introduced by the onto-semiotic approach of mathematics knowledge and instruction. In particular, we have taken a theoretical proposal of levels of inferential reasoning for the Chi-square statistic. Based on the results, the main conclusion was that the proposal above effectively predicted the teachers’ practices, allowing us to distinguish characteristic elements of the levels of inferential reasoning.

Keywords

• inferential reasoning
• statistical inference
• Chi-square
• mathematical practice
• statistics education