Problem-Driven Teaching: Estimating the Population from a Sample

Abstract

Today, mathematics teachers are realizing that there are many benefits of problem-driven teaching, but also face a number of challenges, such as a lack of confidence, not knowing how to design high-quality problems, and not knowing how to deal with the challenges that emerge in problem-driven lessons and statistics classes. To address these challenges, we propose a model for problem-driven teaching which includes three stages: the preparation of the problems; the implementation of teaching; and the evaluation and reflection. Accordingly, we select the topic of ’Estimating the population from a sample’ in the General Senior Secondary Textbook, Mathematics, Compulsory Book 2, to design problem-driven instruction and as an application of problem posing. In the instruction, we pose several interesting problems related to the topic. These problems can successfully stimulate students’ interest in learning statistics. Through these problems, the mathematics teacher can guide the students to think actively and to pose and solve the problem themselves, thus understanding the related concepts and methods in statistics. In addition, the design model applied here is a ready-to-use tool for teachers in designing specifically problem-driven instruction, and can also improve teachers’ problem-posing skills.

Keywords

• problem-driven teaching
• problem posing
• problem solving
• teaching statistics
• instructional design