Year: 2005
Type: dissertation
Abstract: During the course of my career as a teacher at secondary and tertiary levels it has become increasingly apparent to me that many students, from all kinds of backgrounds, tend to skim over those aspects of information that are quantitative.It seems that many lack the confidence to engage with the quantitative material, be it in the form of tables, graphs charts, embedded in the text or written in prose, while others may not be aware of the importance of dealing with this kind of information themselves.This is of concern for several reasons.In the context of education, students need to be able to research information about their chosen area of study.They need to be able to engage with available data and be able to understand what it represents and some of the implications.They also need to be aware that there is a range of interpretations that can be made based on the same data.Interpretations are always influenced by the perspective of the person interpreting the data and when these are reported in print or other forms of media, they may reflect some element of bias.Without the confidence and ability to engage with the reported information the reader may be misinformed, or mislead by the author's own viewpoint.An awareness of the need to encourage and enable students to engage with the quantitative material led to the study on developing students' numeracy to be reported on in this thesis.viii
Author: Marian Kemp
Language: English
Subfield: Statistics and Probability
Field: Mathematics
Domain: Physical Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1515740226