| This study sought to describe the communicative aspect that should be part of any secondary mathematics classroom and, more specifically, the statistics classroom. Focusing on the observation of students allowed for a detailed account of the learning of students, i. e., what they said and wrote, how they used the materials provided by the teacher, what supports promoted understanding, and what difficulties to learning arose during the lesson. The research questions guiding the study were: (i) In what way is attention to students' statistical thinking evident in lesson planning? (ii) To what extent does discourse in the classroom enable students to communicate effectively in the AP Statistics course? (iii) To what extent does communication, such as expressing organized and precise ideas, and analyzing and evaluating the statistical ideas of others, change over time? (iv) To what extent do students' profiles influence success in the advanced placement statistics course?;Garfield's (2002, section 3, Table 1) general model of statistical reasoning provided a framework on which to base a characterization of students' statistical reasoning. As has been found in earlier studies about teaching statistics (Garfield & Ben-Zvi, in press, Sherin, 2002), this teacher encountered challenges in establishing patterns of discourse to encourage effective student communication in the classroom. It was also found that student profiles were contributing factors in students' success in the statistics course. |
