IASE News July 2012
Report from IASE RoundtableThe IASE Roundtable, "Technology in Statistics Education: Virtualities and Realities", was held from 2 - 6 July 2012, in Cebu City, Philippines. Thanks should be given to program committee chair Rob Gould and local organizing committee chair Enriqueta Reston. Approximately 35 participants from 10 countries attended the conference. Thirteen papers were presented and discussed by the group. Revised papers, along with comments from discussants and small group reports, will appear in a special edition of Technology Innovations in Statistics Education. Beyond the detailed discussions during the sessions, social highlights included dinner above the city at the architecture building of the University of San Carlos, and a walk WAY above the city along the outside of the Crown Regency hotel Sky Experience Adventure.
CERME8: Call for Papers on Stochastic ThinkingCERME8, the Eighth Congress of the European Society for Research in Mathematics Education, will take place in Antalya, Turkey from 6 to 10 February 2013. The congress website is http://www.cerme8.metu.edu.tr. Working group 5, "Stochastic thinking", positions itself within research that is fundamentally important at a time when new developments provide new stimulus for growth in the body of research on stochastic thinking. Presentations will be short, serving only to refresh participants' reading of the papers and to feed collaborative group work.
Stochastic thinking refers to statistical and probabilistic thinking and the combination of both. Statistical thinking is a key skill for the citizen who needs to interpret information presented through the media or the workplace, to contribute to modern society and to interpret scholarly papers. An important challenge is to develop statistically literate citizens and meaningful use of statistical tools. An important step forwards would be to consider bridges between data analysis, probability and inference and it is in this common ground that we locate stochastic thinking. Recent developments in technology support dynamic exploration of data and experimentation with probabilistic models as generators of data, as well as in exploratory data analysis or informal statistical inference. However, professional development of teachers is crucial to keep up with such developments.
The working group leaders, Arthur Bakker from the Netherlands, Pedro Arteaga from Spain, Andreas Eichler from Germany, and Corinne Hahn from France, are particularly interested in theoretical, empirical or design-based research papers (10 pages maximum) and poster proposals (2 pages) that address one or more of the following themes, though any papers of relevance to the group focus will also be considered.
* The nature and development of stochastic thinking and its relationship to other types of mathematical thinking, including the interface between probabilistic and statistical thinking, such as in modeling, informal statistical inference or data exploration. * The professional development of mathematics teachers to teach statistics: frameworks of teachers knowledge (components and competences); evaluation of teacher knowledge and ability to use computer tools, and their influence on student or adult statistical and probabilistic thinking. * The role of computer-based tools on stochastic thinking. * The elaboration of theoretical frameworks that may provide insightful models for interpreting evidence from research on stochastic thinking.
There are no restrictions to the area of education or learning. Papers on vocational education and training or adult learning are as welcome as papers on primary, secondary, or tertiary education. Papers and poster proposals should use the CERME8 Microsoft Word template and conform to the guidelines at http://www.cerme8.metu.edu.tr. To submit a work, you must email your paper as a Word .doc or .docx document to Arthur Bakker at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. , AND at the same time to the conference secretariat at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . If possible, please also send a pdf version in addition to the Word document.
Each paper will be peer-reviewed by three people from among those who submit papers to this Working Group. IF you submit a paper, please expect to be asked to review up to three papers yourself between 15 September and 22 October 2012. It may be necessary for you to revise your paper before final acceptance. Please reserve some time to do this in the second half of November. The group leaders will decide about the acceptance of posters.
As a reminder, here are the important dates: 15 September 2012: Deadline for submission of papers. 1 October 2012: Deadline for submission of poster proposals. 22 October 2012: Deadline for reviewers to submit their reviews. 1 December 2012: Deadline for revisions to papers. 6-10 February 2013: Conference in Antalya, Turkey.
Sessions approved for World Statistics ConferenceThe Program Committee for the 2013 World Statistics Congress, 25 - 30 August 2013 in Hong Kong, has approved 7 invited paper sessions and 5 youth theme day invited sessions proposed by IASE. Thanks go out to Nel Verhoeven, Delia North, and Helen MacGillivray for helping construct these 12 sessions for the WSC.
The invited sessions are listed below, with their organizers. 1. Cultural differences in statistics education, Dirk Tempelaar 2. Strategies and structures for student engagement and ownership in statistical learning, Helen MacGillivray 3. Sources of influence in developing statistical literacy, James Nicholson 4. Improving statistics teaching: bringing statisticians and educators together, Maxine Pfannkuch 5. Megaclasses in Statistics Education: a 360 degrees view, Irena Ograjensek and Iddo Gal 6. International contrasts in educational frameworks for teaching statistics to non-specialists, John Harraway 7. Building on foundation courses in statistics for client disciplines, Brian Phillips
The five Invited Paper Sessions accepted are as follows: 1. Learning statistical consulting, Ian Gordon 2. Promoting statistics to youth through the International Statistical Literacy Project, Reija Helenius 3. Learning to teach and assess statistics at the tertiary level, Bruno De Sousa 4. Data visualization for youth appeal, Will Probert 5. Developing undergraduate curricula for statistical workplaces now and future, Chris Wild |
