Secondary education students' understanding of sampling

International audienceThis study aims to identify what students in the 5th and 9th grades from Secondary Education (10 to 14) understand of sampling. Semi-structured, person-to-person audiotaped interviews were carried out with 40 students (20 from each grade), to whom questions were asked concerning some different skills related to sampling. It was noted that, besides the differences between the years of schooling, there was no significant difference in association with the students’ performance. This study shows that, albeit all difficulties, students in the 5th grade are able to answer the sampling aspects