Despite statistical literacy being relatively new in statistics education research, it needs special attention as attempts are being made to enhance the teaching, learning and assessing of this sub-strand. It is important that teachers and researchers are aware of the challenges of teaching this literacy. In this article, the growing importance of statistics in today's information world and conceptions and components of statistical literacy are outlined. Frameworks for developing statistical literacy from research literature are considered next. Examples of tasks used in statistics education research are provided to explain the levels of thinking. Strengths and weaknesses of the frameworks are considered. The article concludes with some implications for teaching and research. ARTICLE HISTORY

Concerns about students' difficulties in statistical reasoning led to a study which explored form five (14-to 16-year-olds) students' ideas in this area. The study focussed on descriptive statistics, graphical representations, and probability. This paper presents and discusses the ways in which students made sense of information in graphical representations (tables and bar graph) obtained from the individual interviews. The findings revealed that many of the students used strategies based on prior experiences (everyday and school) and intuitive strategies. From the analysis, I identified a fourcategory rubric for classifying students' responses. While the results of the study confirm a number of findings of other researchers, the findings go beyond those discussed in the literature. While students could read and compare data presented in a bar graph, they were less competent at reading tables. This could be due to instructional neglect of these concepts or linguistic and contextual problems. The paper concludes by suggesting some implications for researchers.

Despite being relatively new in mathematics education research, qualitative researchapproaches need special attention as attempts are being made to enhance the credibility and trustworthiness of this approach. It is important that researchers are aware of the limitations associated with these methods so that measures are put in place to try and minimize the effects of these limitations Philosophical roots and key features of this paradigm are outlined. Qualitative methods such as the interview approach in research literature as a data gathering tool are considered next. Challenges faced by qualitative researchers in terms of reliability, validity and generability are considered. Examples are provided to illustrate methodological problems and solutions related to qualitative methods.

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