An Investigation of How to Refer Doing Statistics in 8th Grade Mathematics Textbooks

Abstract

Textbooks should provide suggestions for teaching the content and helping students learn big ideas related to concepts being covered (Tarr, Reys, Barker & Billstein, 2006). Since textbooks were used frequently by teachers for covering the key points of the lesson the study recommended that textbooks should have some requirements (Son, 2008; Stodolsky, 1989). The requirements should satisfy the learning objectives of the educational system (MoNE, 2018a). One of the learning domain which include the learning objectives to be taught to students in mathematics textbooks was data handling (MoNE, 2018b). Data handling included doing statistics: the process of formulating questions, collecting, analyzing, and interpreting data to help make decisions in everyday life (NCTM, 2000). The purpose of this study was to investigate the data handling sections of the 8th grade mathematics textbook which are used in MoNE schools in the 2018-2019 school year. It was also evaluated in terms of how involve doing statistics process. For the purposes of the study, a document analysis was used. In order to analyze the data, content analysis was used. The findings of this study depicted that textbooks are inadequately encouraging students in doing statistics process. Furthermore, it was observed that the textbooks aren’t cover focusing conceptional connections sufficiently.