Deficits in the Statistical and Probabilistic Literacy of Citizens: Effects in a World in Crisis

Abstract

The emergency caused by coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has revealed significant deficiencies in citizens’ statistical and probabilistic knowledge and in people’s understanding of mathematical and, particularly, stochastic models, which may lead to wrong personal or institutional choices, with critical consequences for the entire population. Mathematics teachers play an essential role in ensuring citizens’ statistical and probabilistic literacy. This study aimed at analyzing the pedagogical content knowledge that teachers utilized to teach statistics and probability through considering contextualized situations. In order to accomplish this purpose, fourteen secondary mathematics teachers participated in a formative and evaluative activity that was designed using the transformational professional competence model. During each evaluative phase, a group discussion was conducted. Participants were asked to reflect on their actions when promoting statistical and probabilistic literacy by considering a range of topics (data science, didactic resources, and methodological approaches) that were addressed during the training phase. A mixed, quantitative–qualitative methodological design was used for the data collection and analysis, which involved open-ended, multiple-choice, or scale-type questions that were moderated by the Metaplan® approach and the Mentimeter® software. The main ideas that emerged from the results indicated the need to reinforce the use of real data, technological resources to handle the visualization of information, the elaboration of different types of graphs besides the classical ones, and the formulation of hypotheses. The initial diagnosis will continue within a research and practice community made up of teachers and researchers. Therefore, a working proposal based on examples and models contextualized within the COVID-19 crisis is presented in order to enhance secondary mathematics teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge

This research was carried out within the project “From mathematics education to data science: statistical and digital literacy of secondary school students” (INIE-19-MOD.C-5), which was funded by the Consejería de Educación y Cultura of Asturias and the the University of Oviedo. The activity was co-funded by the Center for Teachers and Resources (CPR, in Spanish acronym) Gijón-Oriente. Laura Muñiz-Rodríguez and Luis J. Rodríguez-Muñiz were also supported by grant TIN2017-87600-P from the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación of Spain. Ángel Alsina was also supported by grant EDU2017-84979-R from European Regional Development Fund and the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación of Spain