Characteristics of Elementary School Students' Probabilistic Reasoning

Langrall, Cynthia W.; Mooney, Edward S.

doi:10.1007/0-387-24530-8_5

Cited by 35 publications

(37 citation statements)

References 30 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…During the last decades there is a scientific orientation in this direction; in enlightening what children know or understand concerning probabilistic notions, as partly supported by the current results, and in turn how this prior knowledge and understanding may become the starting point of instruction (Langrall and Mooney 2005).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 54%

Intuitive and Informal Knowledge in Preschoolers’ Development of Probabilistic Thinking

Nikiforidou

Pange

Chadjipadelis

2013

IJEC

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Abstract:Preschoolers develop a wide range of mathematical informal knowledge and intuitive thinking before they enter formal, goal-oriented education. In their everyday activities young children get engaged with situations that enhance them to develop skills, concepts, strategies, representations, attitudes, constructs and operations concerning a wide range of mathematical notions. Recently there is scientific interest in linking children's informal and formal knowledge in order to provide them with opportunities to avoid biases aiming at formulating, perceiving, reflecting on and exercising probabilistic notions. The current study investigates preschoolers' (N=90) intuitive understanding of the likelihood of events in a probabilistic task with spinners. Participants, at the age of 4 to 6, are tested on their predictions of the most probable outcome prior to and after an instructive session of reasoning. The probabilistic task, based on constructivist principles, includes methodological alterations concerning the sample space and the themes of the stimuli. Educational implications are further discussed under the general point of view that in order to link informal to formal mathematical learning in preschool classroom, the subject content and the cognitive capacity of children are important to match.Los niños en edad preescolar desarrollan un conocimiento matemático informal y un pensamiento intuitivo antes de comenzar la educación formal, orientada a la búsqueda de objetivos. En sus actividades cotidianas, los niños pequeños participan en situaciones que promueven el desarrollo de habilidades, percepciones, estrategias, representaciones, actitudes, construcciones y operaciones relacionadas con una amplia gama de conceptos matemáticos. Recientemente existe un interés científico por establecer una relación entre el conocimiento formal e informal de los niños, permitiéndoles así evitar sesgos en la formulación, percepción, razonamiento y/o en el ejercicio de nociones probabilísticas. El presente estudio aborda la comprensión intuitiva de la probabilidad de eventos en niños en edad preescolar (N=90) en un juego probabilístico con discos giratorios. Se examinó la capacidad de los participantes, niños de entre 4 y 6 años de edad, para prever el resultado más probable antes y después de una sesión instructiva de

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 54%

Intuitive and Informal Knowledge in Preschoolers’ Development of Probabilistic Thinking

Nikiforidou

Pange

Chadjipadelis

2013

IJEC

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…As we already mentioned, this may be attributed to her assumptions on what was 'needed' to be learned from these activities. Langrall and Mooney (2005) suggest that instruction on probability should be two-fold in order to elicit the learner's ''awareness of the potential conflict between a primary intuition and the logical structures of probability (p. 113) and to assist the development of ''more normative secondary intuitions that can be accessed to override inappropriate or limiting primary intuitions'' (p. 113). Tarr (2002) argues for the implementation of probabilities instruction at an early stage by describing a study in which the probabilistic notions ''should come from students' experiences' ' (p. 483).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For example, the work of Piaget and his colleagues and the work of Fischbein seem to have crucial differences with respect to their educational implications (Greer 2001;Skoumpourdi 2003). Langrall and Mooney (2005) in their literature review state that the results of relevant studies:…”

mentioning

confidence: 98%

Kindergarten Children Discussing the Fairness of Probabilistic Games: The Creation of a Primary Discursive Community

Tatsis

Kafoussi

Skoumpourdi

2008

Early Childhood Educ J

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In this paper we analyse the language used by kindergarten children and their teacher while they discuss the fairness of two games that involved the concept of chance. Their discussions show that the children are able to overcome their primary intuitions concerning the fairness of a game and to comprehend the important role of materials. The children mostly used counting strategies in order to justify their opinion; this reveals the establishment of a primary discursive community based on the premise that each opinion should be justified in order to be accepted by the other children and the teacher.

show abstract

“…Some children only concentrate on a single event since their thinking is mainly deterministic (Langrall and Mooney 2005). It is then important that children understand the need to take into account all different possible outcomes in an experiment to compute its probability.…”

Section: Fundamental Probabilistic Ideasmentioning

confidence: 99%