STUDENTS ’ BELIEFS ABOUT THE BENEFIT OF STATISTICAL KNOWLEDGE WHEN PERCEIVING INFORMATION THROUGH DAILY MEDIA

One general aim of developing students ’ statistical literacy is to achieve students ’ critical stance referring to statistically-based decision making in modern society reported in daily media like newspapers or TV. However, research shows that adults are predominately struggling with statistical information proposed by daily media. Therefore, we focus on the relation between students ’ statistical knowledge and their beliefs. Our research approach consists of developing and conducting an intervention study aiming to connect statistical knowledge with the application of this knowledge. With mixed methods (tests & interviews), we investigate the development of both students ’ statistical knowledge and students ’ beliefs about the benefit of statistical knowledge when perceiving information through daily media. In our report, we outline the development of the intervention, the method of our investigation and first results. SETTING THE FIELD “Citizens who cannot properly interpret quantitative data are, in this day and age, functionally illiterate ” (MSEB-NRC, 1990, p. 8). The ability to properly interpret quantitative data and, thus, to properly interpret statistical data in daily life is described in statistics education research as statistical literacy (Gal, 2004)