Investgation Research Of The Primary School Students’ Statistical Literacy

Statistics are widely used in daily life, people are increasingly required to deal with data, thus we need to possess the ability of collecting, sorting, analyzing data and have some statistical literacy, which is an important part of mathematical literacy. The domestic researches on it are still in the initial stage and not enough attention. Clarifying the connotation and the elements of statistical literacy can help researchers and practitioners of mathematics education to deepen the understanding of mathematical literacy. Through the evaluation, we could understand the characteristics and problems of the statistical literacy of primary school students in China, enrich the research of mathematics education, promote better development of Chinese citizens’ statistical literacy, and can also help teachers to improve teaching.This research mainly use literature analysis method, comparison method, investigation method, statistical analysis method.According to the existing literature and the related research, we define the connotation and the elements of statistical literacy; Compared to the probability and statistics knowledge points of domestic primary school mathematics textbook, combined with the "full-time compulsory education mathematics curriculum standard(2011)"to determine the evaluation content, and thus make two-way specification table and work out the preliminary test, through forecast, project analysis and reliability analysis to determine the final test. We elected 260 sixth grade students of 4 different conditions school of Chongqing as samples for evaluation, at the same time, interviewed teachers and students openly; Using Excel2010, SPSS 18.0 for data processing, analyze the current situation of the sixth grade primary school students’ statistical literacy, and then give recommendations.Statistical literacy in this thesis is defined as:An individual’s ability that being interest in statistics, understanding statistics in the real world role, and the ability to making a reasonable interpretation of the relevant issues and judging by using statistics in avariety of background. Its constituent elements, contains statistical emotional attitudes, knowledge and skills of statistics. The main conclusions:(1)In general,87% students can achieve a basic level of statistical literacy and have a better performance on statistical emotional attitude than statistical knowledge skill. Students are able to understand the basic statistical concepts, read charts, and still need to strengthen the learning and exercise for problems which needs to find more clues to solve. At the same time, selecting the appropriate statistical charts to represent data and the ability to draw charts need to be improved. (2) Significant statistical literacy and gender; the overall level of statistical literacy, statistical emotional attitude, statistical knowledge skill of boys are slightly lower than that of girls, and the girls’ performance is more stable. (3)Significant statistical literacy levels and types of schools; the overall level of students in the city of statistical literacy, statistical emotional attitude, statistical knowledge skill are slightly higher than rural students; the overall level of statistical literacy of students in the city is more stable, but the emotional attitude less stable than rural.(4) Statistical literacy was positively related with the elements of students. (5) Statistics and statistics related knowledge and skills of emotional attitude is positive.Based on the analysis of current situation and problems, it is recommended that:(1) put more emphasis upon the teaching of statistics; (2) contact with real life, design statistical activities as much as possible, and enable students to learn by practice, in order to strengthen the statistical thinking, experience and enrich experience in basic activities; (3) guide students to participate in statistical activities regularly, grasp the basic statistical methods, appreciate the randomness of data, learn to understand the data objectively and comprehensively, form the consciousness and habits of data analysis; (4) focus more on rural students and boys in teaching to achieve balanced development of statistical literacy of boys and girls in different types of schools.There is few research on the measurement of statistical literacy at home and abroad, especially for students in primary school. This study attempts to explore in the area, there are many deficiencies in testing tools and sampling due to the limit of time and ability, we hope to complete the study in future.