Teaching and learning of probability

Abstract

In this paper, we develop a personal synthesis of the most outstanding research on the teaching and learning of probability in the past years. We conducted a systematic search to examine publications on this topic in mathematics education, statistics education, education, and psychology journals. This exploration was complemented by additional studies published in conference proceedings or books. We classified these papers to highlight the main recent research tendencies in the field, according to the theme studied and considering the research objectives. Epistemological analyses suggest that informal inference based on simulation diminishes the topic abstraction but reduces probability to its frequentist view. Topics receiving particular attention include children’s probabilistic knowledge, the effect of visualizations on solving conditional probability problems, teachers’ education and probability modelling. In the final section, we recommend relevant points in which more investigation is needed to complete our knowledge about teaching and learning. In particular, we miss research on teachers’ mathematical knowledge of many probability concepts and on their didactic knowledge.