Improving High School Students' Statistical Reasoning Skills: A Case of Applying Anchored Instruction. 6

ABSTRACT : A learning unit was developed on Binomial Distribution, Poisson Distribution and Normal Distribution by working alongside with the statistics teacher and professors and using the statistics textbook,. Titled Mark's Eco-encounter, the learning unit was composed of a video that presented the challenge and activity guide that provided synopsis of the story, formulae, and other information needed to solve the challenge. The fictitious story revolved around high school students who participated in a national environmental camp. The task of the class was to help the main characters in the story, Mark, Ann and Lui, solve the problems that they encounter. The instructional intervention was implemented for three weeks. Comparing respondents' incremental scores, data showed a highly significant difference between the students who studied using the anchored instruction and the teacher-centered in their statistical reasoning skills in traditional word and authentic problems related to Binomial, Normal and Poisson Distribution. Based on the students' feedback, Mark's Eco-encounter made their class interesting and interactive, enabled them to study involving realistic situation, motivated them to learn on their own, promoted collaboration, allowed them to learn about environment aside from statistics, provided them episodic memory cues, and changed their perception of statistics. The students also said that they like the new approach in learning compared to their usual statistics class. 56

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