References on Conjectures


Articles and Books



Ausubel, D. P. (1960). The Use of Advance Organizers in the Learning and Retention of Meaningful Verbal Learning. Journal of Educational Psychology, 1, 267.



Bransford, J., Brown, A. L., & Cocking, R. R. (Eds.) (2000) How people learn: Brain, mind, exerience, and school. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.



Chance, B., delMas, R., & Garfield, J. (2004). Reasoning About Sampling Distributions. In D. Ben-Zavi & J. Garfield (Eds.), The Challenge of Developing Statistical Literacy, Reasoning, and Thinking. Kluwer Academic Publishers; Dordrecht, The Netherlands.



Cobb, P., & Bowers, J. (1999). Cognitive and Situated Learning Perspectives in Theory and Practice. Educational Researcher, 28(2), 4-15.



Cortina, J. L. (2002). Developing Instructional Conjectures about How to Support Student Understanding of the Arithmetic Mean as a Ratio. ICOTS6.



Garfield, J., delMas, R., and Chance, B. (in press). Using student informal notions of variability to develop an understanding of formal measures of variability. In Thinking about Data, edited by P. Shah and M. Lovett.



Macdonald, R. H., Manduca, C. A., Mogk, D. W., & Tewksbury, B. J. (2005). Teaching Methods in Undergraduate Geoscience Courses: Results of the 2004 On the Cutting Edge Survey of U. S. Faculty. Journal of Geoscience Education, 53(3), 237-252.



Mosteller, F. (1988). Broadening the Scope of Statistics and Statistical Education, The American Statistician, 42, 93-99.



Pfannkuch, M., & Brown, C. M. (1996) Building on and Challenging Student Intuition About Probability: Can We Improve Undergraduate Learning? Journal of Statistics Education, 4(1), 1-22.



Piaget, J. (2001). The psychology of intelligence (2nd Ed.). London: Routledge. [Originally published in 1950].



Posner, G. J., Strike, K. A., Hewson, P. W. and Gertzog, W. A. (1982), Accommodation of a Scientific Conception: Toward a Theory of Conceptual Change, Science Education, 66(2), 211-227.



Ramsey, W., Stich, S. P. & Rumelhart, D. W. (1991). Philosophy and Connectionist Theory. In Developments in Connectionist Theory, Rumelhart & Gluck (Eds.)



Rossman, A. L., & Chance, B. L. (1998). The Workshop Mathematics Project - Workshop Statistics: Discovery with Data and Minitab. Springer-/Verlag: New York.



Scheaffer, R. L., Watkins, A., Witmer, J., & Gnanadesikan, M. (2004). Activity-Based Statistics (2nd Ed.) Instructor Resources. Key College Publishing



Simon, M. A. (1995). Reconstructing Mathematics Pedagogy from a Constructivist Perspective. Journal for Research in Mathematics Education, 26(2), 114-145.




Articles and Papers Available Online or with Abstracts on CAUSEweb.org



American Heritage Dictionary (2006) American Heritage Dictionary


Bakker, A. & Gravemeijer, K. P. E. (2004). Learning to Reason About Distribution.


The purpose of this chapter is to explore how informal reasoning about distribution can be developed in a technological learning environment.


To read more: Reasoning About Distribution



Burtch, M. (2003). The Evolution of Conjecturing in a Differential Equations Course. Conjecturing in a Course.



Chance, B. L. (2002). Components of Statistical Thinking and Implications for Instruction and Assessment. Journal of Statistical Education, 10(3), 1-26. Implications for Instruction



Cobb, P., & McClain, K. (2004). Principles of Instructional Design for Supporting the Development of Student Statistical Reasoning. In D. Ben-Zavi & J. Garfield (Eds.), The Challenge of Developing Statistical Literacy, Reasoning, and Thinking. Kluwer Academic Publishers; Dordrecht, The Netherlands.


This chapter proposes design principles for developing statistical reasoning in students.


To learn more: Developing Statisitcal Reasoning



Davis, J. (2001). Conceptual Change. In M. Orey (Ed.), Emerging perspectives on learning, teaching, and technology.


Available Website: Conceptual Change



delMas, R. C., Garfield, J. B., & Chance, B. L. (1999). A Model of Classroom Research in Action: Developing Simulation Activities to Improve Student Statistical Reasoning.


Our findings demonstrate that while software can provide the means for a rich classroom experience, computer simulations alone do not guarantee conceptual change.


To read more: Developing Simulation Activities



Edelson, D. C., Pea, R. D., & Gomez, L. M. (1996). The Collaboratory Notebook. Communications of the ACM, 39(4), 32-33. Collaboratory Notebook



Makar, K., & Confrey, J. (2002). Comparing Two Distributions: Investigating Secondary Teacher Statistical Thinking. ICOTS6.


This paper highlights the statistical thinking of teachers in analyzing their own student high-stakes test data.


To learn more: Investigating Secondary Teacher Statistical Thinking



Meletiou-Mavrotheris, M.. & Lee, C. (2002). Teaching Students the Stochastic Nature of Statistical Concepts in an Introductory Statistics Course. Statistics Education Research Journal, 1(2), 22-37. Statistical Concepts



Saldanha, L. (2004). Is This Sample Unusual? An investigation of students: Exploring connections between sampling distributions and statistical inference.


This study explores the reasoning that emerged among eight high school juniors and seniors as they participated in a classroom teaching experiment addressing stochastic conceptions of sampling and statistical inference.


To learn more: Exploring Connections