Page 308 - Invited Paper Session (IPS) - Volume 2

IPS249 Terán, Teresita
knowledge of every citizen in our society. This is something on which every
educational system seems to agree on. Holmes (1980) claims that statistics is
a part of the desirable general education provided to future adult citizens, who
need to acquire the ability to read and understand statistical charts and graphs
that appear most of the times on media. In order to be able to move around
successfully in today’s world, connected by telecommunications and socially,
economically and politically interdependent, it is necessary to interpret an
extended range of information on the most varied topics.
Ottaviani (1998) considers that the study of statistics helps personal
development, fostering critical reasoning, based on judgement of objective
evidence; students should be able to use quantitative data to understand it
and explain it in context. A successful scientific background requires
instruction on probabilistic and statistical thinking.
These recommendations have motivated the idea of statistics to become
part of the syllabus more and more. Statistical reasoning is a major component
of essential learning, as suggested by Wild y Pfannkuch (1999) who make
emphasis on the integration of statistics and context.

2. Development
The approach to the introduction of statistical instruction on syllabuses at
different levels of education has already been stated; we will now turn the
focus on Argentina, showing the remarkable changes that have been
registered.
Until 1993, at initial and primary level of education no topic of statistics had
been covered. At higher levels some topics on descriptive statistics were
covered only as part of math syllabuses at 4th year of education. They were
rarely taught by teachers since they had not had statistics on their teacher
training courses. Only a few schools that were dependent on universities,
imparted statistics as a curricular subject. On this respect, in 1993 when the
Federal Law of Education Nº 24.195 was enacted, contents of statistics and
probability started to be taken into consideration to be included as part of the
Basic Common Contents for the different levels and cycles of the new
academic structure.
Statistics started to be considered on the different levels contemplated by
the Federal Law of Education (1993) as a segment of math syllabuses.
The new National Educational Law changed the structure of the National
Educational System. It comprises 4 levels: initial, primary, secondary and higher
education. Each jurisdiction embraced the general guidelines and made
adjustments based on their regional characteristics. From here onwards, we
will present and analyze the jurisdictional approach implemented in Santa Fe
province.

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