EXPLORING CHILDRENS DATA MODELING

Elementary students' reasoning about data modeling is explored by cond ucting two design experiments. In the first design experiment, a class of fifth-grade students worked in six different design teams to devel op hypermedia documents about Colonial America. Students compared the lifestyles of colonists with their own lifestyles. To this end, 10 ''d ata analysts'' developed a survey, collected and coded data, and used the dynamic notations of a computer-based tool, Tabletop (Hancock, Kap ut, & Goldsmith, 1992), to develop and examine patterns of interest in their data. Our general approach was to let the reasoning and thinkin g displayed in one session with the data analysts provoke and steer th e tasks and problems posed in the next session. Analysis of student co nversations, including their dialogue with the teacher-researcher, ind icated that the construction of data was an important preamble to desc ription and inference. Moreover, students' ideas about many elements o f data modeling were tied closely to forms of notation. In the second design experiment, two children and their classroom teacher were consu lted about the use of a simple randomization distribution to test hypo theses about the nature of ESP. Here, experimentation afforded a frame work for teaching about inference grounded by the creation of a random ization distribution of the students' data. We conclude that data cons truction and analysis provide an opportunity to involve students in th e important enterprise of mathematical modeling.