An Investigation of 4th Grade Students' Statistical Thinking

The purpose of the current study is to investigate 4th grade students' statistical thinking. The research was conducted on 187 fourth grade students and the students were asked to work on tasks developed on the basis of four different contexts. In the study, the qualitative survey research design was adopted. The collected data were analyzed on the basis of the framework of statistical thinking levels for primary school students. The findings of the study revealed that the students' levels of statistical thinking are higher in the constructs of describing, representing, analyzing and interpreting data than in the constructs of organizing and reducing data. The students were found to be most successful in reading the data related to the construct of describing data, followed by the evaluation of similarities/differences of data and graphs. The students were observed to have difficulty in interpreting the concepts of average, distribution and variation considered to be related to the construct of organizing and reducing data. In relation to the construct of representing data, the students were found to be more successful in completing an uncompleted graph than representing data with different types of representation. In relation to the construct of analyzing and interpreting data, the students were found to be more successful in reading between the data than in reading beyond the data.