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Colloquium 2/27: Dustin Smith on Student Reasoning Through Storytelling

On Thursday February 27th at 3:30, as part of his campus visit Dustin Owen Smith will be talking about “Eliciting Early Elementary School Students’ Informal Inferential Reasoning through Storytelling”.

Abstract:One growing area of research on statistical learning is Informal Inferential Reasoning (IIR). Makar and Rubin (2009) describe IIR as having three components: expressing uncertainty, making and evaluating claims, and drawing explicitly from the data when making or evaluating claims. There is limited research about IIR at the early levels of elementary school but this type of informal reasoning can be a powerful precursor to formal statistical learning in the middle grades (English, 2012). This presentation will discuss a method for providing opportunities for young children (Grades K, 2, and 4) to make informal inferences about data through Storytelling-Questioning. Storytelling-Questioning consists of the researcher reading students a story, and asking strategic questions, that are grounded in the story’s context and content. To understand IIR and the impact of Storytelling-Questioning, this study was built around the following research questions:

1. What does Storytelling-Questioning reveal about the similarities and differences in students’ Informal Inferential Reasoning within and across grades K, 2 and 4?
2. How can Storytelling-Questioning be leveraged to help early elementary school students engage in Informal Inferential Reasoning?
   1. What types of questions are most/least effective in engaging students in IIR?
   2. What types of stories and contexts are most/least effective in engaging students in IIR?

This work has potential to contribute to the description of IIR in the early grades as well as provide a practical pedagogical approach for addressing IIR in the classroom in a way that represents a new way of using storytelling to teach mathematics.  Here is a flyer in PDF form

Position Available: Tenure-track Assistant/Associate Professor

The Department invites applications for a nine-month tenure-track position beginning with the 2014-2015 academic year. Strong preference will be given to applicants with a record of publication in mathematics or statistics education and experience and/or interest in outreach and grant acquisition related to STEM education. See more details in our position announcement.

Texas Undergraduate Mathematics Conference 2013

Eight faculty and students from SFA attended the Ninth Annual Texas Undergraduate Mathematics Conference at St. Mary's University in San Antonio Texas on October 25-26. Two students gave presentations on their research projects. Plan to join us next year!

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