The Role of Concept Images in Developing Statistical Understanding: Statistical Significance

Instruction often glosses over core concepts, leaving students with fragile understandings and limited ability to use those concepts. Interacting with carefully developed dynamic interactive technology apps can help students build a “movie clip” of features of the concept that can become the basis for understanding. This paper discusses the use of such apps in a simulation based, formula-light statistics and probability course for elementary preservice teachers The discussion includes a description of the course content leading to inference and the results of analyzing student thinking with respect to statistical significance using an adaptation of the SOLO taxonomy. Recommendations are given for instruction and additional research.