Session Information
ERG SES H 06, Mathematics education
Parallel Paper Session
Contribution
For the last two decades, there has been a considerable attention to the cross-national comparison of countries among the educational research domain. Specially, in mathematics education, international comparative studies such as Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and Program for International Students Assessment (PISA) lead to acceleration of comparative studies in countries around the world. Such studies draw attention to textbooks that are regarded as a reflection of national curricula and written sources that teachers and students frequently use (Valverde, Bianchi, Wolfe, Schmidt, & Houang, 2002).
Measures of central tendency have been included in school textbooks for many years (Jacobbe & Carvalho, 2011). The reason behind this phenomenon is that they are essential concepts regarded as a summary and representative value of the data set in statistics (Shaughnessy, 2007). However, recent researches indicated that both students and teachers have difficulty in conceptualizing mean, median, and mode concepts and it is possible to improve comprehensively conceptual and procedural understanding of the measures of central tendency in teaching and learning of mathematics (Groth & Bergner, 2009). Cross-cultural studies in the learning domain of data analysis and probability will enlighten our understanding of such issues in different contexts. In order to explain cross-national differences in educational opportunities and in achievement with regard to the results of the international comparative studies such as TIMSS, many studies were conducted. Cai, Lo & Watanabe (2004), for example, conducted a comparative analysis of the measures of central tendency in U.S.A. and some Asian textbooks so that it could contribute to interpretation of cross-national differences. In Turkey, there are cross-national studies comparing textbooks involving the U.S.A., Singapore. There is still a need for further research on comparing the coverage of specific concept such as measures of central tendency (Erbas & Alacaci, 2009).
The purpose of this study was to investigate the presentation of measures of central tendency concepts in mathematics textbooks in Turkey, Singapore and U.S.A. It is hoped that this study would help educational research community to understand the cross-national differences among these countries and contribute to cross-national studies with regard to the learning domain of data analysis.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Cai, J., Lo, J. J., & Watanabe, T. (2002). Intended treatments of arithmetic average in U.S. and Asian school mathematics. School Science and Mathematics, 102(8), 391–404. Erbas, A. K., Alacaci, C. (2009). Comparative analysis of sixth and seventh grade Turkish, American, and Singaporean textbooks. TUBITAK Project, Number 107K547. Fan, L., & Kaeley, G. S. (2000). The influence of textbook on teaching strategies: An empirical study. Mid-Western Educational Researcher, 13(4), 2–9. Groth, R. E., & Bergner, J. A. (2006). Preservice elementary teachers’ conceptual and procedural knowledge of mean, median, and mode. Mathematical Thinking and Learning, 8(1), 37–64. Jacobbe, T. & Carvalho, C. (2011). Teachers’ understanding of averages. In C. Batanero G. Burrill & C. Reading (Eds.), Teaching statistics in school mathematics-challenges for teaching and teacher education: A joint ICMI/IASE study: The 18th ICMI study (pp. 199-209). International Commission on Mathematical Instruction: Springer. Shaughnessy, J. M. (2007). Research on statistics learning and reasoning. In The Second Handbook of Research on Mathematics, Ed. F.K. Lester, pp. 957–1010. Reston, VA: National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM). Valverde, G. A., Bianchi, L. J., Wolfe, R. G., Schmidt, W. H., & Houang, R. T. (2002). According to the book: Using TIMSS to investigate the translation of policy into practice through the world of textbook. Dordrecht; Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Yang, D-C., Reys, R. E., & Wu, L-L. (2010). Comparing the development of fractions in the fifth- and sixth- graders’ textbooks of Singapore, Taiwan, and the USA. School Science and Mathematics, 110(3), 118-127.
Search the ECER Programme
- Search for keywords and phrases in "Text Search"
- Restrict in which part of the abstracts to search in "Where to search"
- Search for authors and in the respective field.
- For planning your conference attendance you may want to use the conference app, which will be issued some weeks before the conference
- If you are a session chair, best look up your chairing duties in the conference system (Conftool) or the app.