Assessing pupils’ ability to generalize∗

The Challenge of Developing Statistical Literacy, Reasoning and Thinking

“…Subjects' judgments of statistical association in a variety of situations have been investigated by researchers in social psychology (e.g., Alloy & Tabachnik, 1984;Crocker, 1981), science education (e.g., Donnelly & Welford, 1989;Swatton, 1994;Swatton & Taylor, 1994), and statistics education (e.g., Batanero, Estepa, & Godino, 1997). Many studies have followed Inhelder and Piaget (1958) in considering association of dichotomous variables in contingency tables, whereas few have considered covariation of two numerical variables .…”

“…Attention to selected data points may involve only the extreme points in a scatterplot (Batanero et al, 1997) or the cells with confirming cases in contingency tables (e.g., Crocker, 1981;Inhelder & Piaget, 1958). Attention to selected variables has been observed in some studies that have identified levels of response based on the number of variables students have referred to in verbal graph interpretations (e.g., Donnelly & Welford, 1989;Swatton, 1994;Swatton & Taylor, 1994). Swatton showed sixth-grade students scatter graphs and line graphs and asked, "what do you notice about [X] and [Y]?"…”

“…Verbal graph interpretation was assessed using Q2a and Q2d. Q2a was worded in an open manner to avoid the assumption that an association exists (Donnelly & Welford, 1989). Because students may have avoided comment on covariation in Q2a, Q2d* was included and then revised to Q2d to provide a more specific cue about covariation.…”

The Role of Metacognitive Activities in the Contextual Use of Primary Pupils' Conceptions of Science

“…The bulk of research interested in children's behaviour after the learning event has focused on the transferability of general cognitive skills (McKeachie, 1987; and of science process skills (Donelly & Welford, 1989;Toh & Woolnough, 1994), with less attention paid to how pupils' conceptions of science are used across contexts (Georghiades, 2001a;Engel-Clough & Driver, 1986;Tytler, 1994). In their attempts to enhance pupils' ability to use school learning across contexts, following instruction, a growing number of researchers consider metacognition to be relevant to investigating such cross-contextual use of concepts (Georghiades, 2001a;Hacker, Dunlosky, & Graesser, 1998).…”

Science Process Skills: are they generalisable?

“…The notion of transfer has been widely documented in research literature (Gagné, 1965;Clements, 1981), especially for paper-and-pencil problem-solving situations where the procedure for solving the problem is clearly defined. The collective evidence for the more open-ended situations, in particular the science process skills (such as planning, performing and interpreting) involved for hands-on laboratory investigations, is still inconclusive (Tomera, 1974;Donnelly & Welford, 1989). In spite of this, classwork assessment schemes tend to assume that such practical skills are generalisable (Lock, 1989).…”