Assessing Students’ Informal Inferential Reasoning using SOLO Taxonomy based Framework

Abstract

Post-graduate students in statistics courses are expected to use their reasoning when making informal inference from comparison of two box plots. A framework based on the SOLO Taxonomy that can be used to assess students’ informal inferential reasoning as they compare two box plots had been developed. It consists of a set of descriptors of the levels of reasoning and interview tasks that can be used to collect evidence of students’ informal inferential reasoning. An example of a student's response to one of the tasks and how the descriptors are used to determine the levels of students’ informal inferential reasoning will be presented.