Activity-oriented teaching of stochastics in elementary school

There is little research on how to best introduce children to stochastics. In general, demonstration and concrete experience seem to be necessary to establish good understanding of stochastics in children. Pupils seem to be able to develop an intuition on stochastic thinking when they actively solve probabilistic problems and carry out probability experiments based on age-adequate content and materials.

This study investigates how activity-oriented education can improve stochastics achievement of children. We aim to clarify whether and how much stochastics achievement of elementary school children can be improved comparing different teaching methods and we want to identify an instruction method that is most suitable for improving stochastics achievement of elementary school children.

A total of 617 primary and secondary school children aged 6-12 years participated in the study. Of those, 324 children had student-centred activity-oriented education in stochastics between the two tests, 202 children were instructed by a teaching approach where worksheets were used and 91 children with no specific intervention served as control group.

We analysed gain in stochastics performance for each group using a MLM and several repeated measures ANOVAs.

All three groups improved their performance from the first to the second test session. Independent of social background and gender - student-centred activity-oriented education was more effective in improving test scores in all fields of stochastics than the rather teacher-centred approach where worksheets were used or no specific stochastics education.

We conclude that children can improve their understanding of stochastics considerably during the elementary school years and that teaching via hands-on experience is more successful than a teaching approach where worksheets are used.