Towards posing and answering questions about bar graphs

Abstract

Posing questions about categorical variables and answering them using representations is a neglected area of research. A small exploratory study was conducted with 13-14-year-old Pasifika and Māori students using culturally appropriate data and pedagogy. Data collection included pre and post-tests and a video-record of a 10-lesson implementation. The findings indicated novice students could learn to pose quantitative questions about categorical variables but struggled to deconstruct questions and to decode representations to answer simple, conditional, and joint questions. The implications of the findings are discussed.