Statistical reasoning and scientific inquiry : statistics in the physical science classroom

Teaching science using an inquiry approach is encouraged by several organisations responsible for defining teaching and learning guidelines in North America. However, using this approach can be difficult because of the complexity of inquiry. One source of difficulty is an inability to make sense of the data. Error variation, in particular, poses a significant barrier to the correct interpretation of data and therefore successful inquiry learning. A study was conducted to examine middle school students' ability to make sense of the data they collected in three related experiments. These data involved taking measurements of two continuous variables that were affected by error variation. The results indicated that students tended not to use abstract patterns to describe the data but rather used more local patterns that did not make use of the whole data set. However, many students also indicated an intuitive understanding that a greater amount of data could be used to generate results that are more accurate. This suggests a disparity between what the students understand about data and what they are capable of doing with data. Educational implications are that students may benefit from learning ideal patterns that can be compared to non-ideal data they collect