ABSTRACT

RICE, JENNA MARIE. Teachers’ Use of Technology in Solving an Informal Inference Problem. (Under the direction of Dr. Hollylynne Stohl Lee.) Informal statistical inference is the process of making inferences based on data without using formal statistical procedures. The purpose of this study is to examine how teachers use technology to solve an informal inference problem, and to determine their levels of reasoning about the relationship between expectation, variation, and sample size. Fifty-seven pre-service and in-service teachers across three institutions in the United States wrote documents describing their problem-solving strategies for a specific task. These documents ranged in length from one page (including screenshots) to fifteen pages. This study utilized a case study approach that considered three different technologies, Probability Explorer, Microsoft Excel, and Fathom, to be three cases. A framework to determine teachers’ levels of reasoning about the relationship between expectation, variation, and sample size was modified from the framework described by Watson, Callingham, and Kelly (2007). The modified framework outlined hierarchical levels of reasoning that ranged from Inconsistent to Explanatory Comparative. Teachers were coded at specific levels based on their responses and how they used simulated data to support their conclusions. The findings from this study indicate that teachers who use Probability Explorer tend to simulate fewer repeated samples than teachers who use Microsoft Excel or Fathom, primarily because of constraints within the technology. More repeated samples were associated with higher levels of reasoning. The types of conclusions teachers formed also appeared to be related to their choice of technology because each technology choice offered slightly different graphical representations, as well as different statistical functions. The majority of teachers were coded at the highest reasoning levels, but a substantial number of teachers still operated at the lower levels of reasoning. Teachers’ Use of Technology in Solving an Informal Inference Problem