The Study On The Development Of Statistical Thinking In Young Children Aged 5-7

The purpose of this study was to investigate the developmental characteristics of young children's statistical thinking, including characteristics and level of statistical thinking of children from five to seven years old. And the study also discussed the types and characteristics of representing statistical data in two different situations, one is spontaneous representation, the other is the presentation in the condition that a presentation model was provided. A sample of 180 children aged 5-7 was randomly selected from two ordinary preschools and one primary school in Shanghai. The test to assess young children's statistical thinking was adapted from the measure created by Graham (Graham,2000). The study examed the statues of young children's developmental characteristics of statistical thinking and the developmental tracks by means of descriptive statistics; the effects of age and gender on the performances of the children's statistical thinking were checked by the method of MANOVA; lastly, the types and characteristics of children's statistical data in two different situations were examed. And the children's developmental tracks of spontaneous representation were discussed.The results indicated that when the children were older, the development of statistical thinking of the children improved. The difference between the children aged 5and 6 was greater than the children aged 6 and 7; the development of children aged 5-7 have four levels (level 1:Idiosyncatic, level 2:Transitional, level 3:Quantitative, level 4: Analytical). The developmental tracks of children's statistical thinking showed that most of children aged 5 are in transitional level that children would engage in a task but would generally focus on only one aspect of it. the children aged 6 were developing from transitional level to analytical level, most of children aged 7 were in analytical level that they would not only presure several relevant features of a task but would also make connections among these features; But no gender discrimination was found on the children's statistical thinking; The types of spontaneous representation of children aged 5-7 are digital form, graphal form, digital combined graphal form, and tabular form. The developmental tracks of children's spontaneous representation were developing from digital form, graphal form, digital combined graphal form to tabular form. When the children got older, the development of representing statistical data of young children aged 5-7 in two different situations improved. When children aged 5 and 6 tasked represent data, the score of table representation was higher than the scores of pie representation, point representation, and map representation. While, the highest score of representation data of children aged 7 was map representation.