Probability Concepts in Primary School

Helen Tsakiridou^1, and Eleni Vavyla¹

¹Department of Primary Education, University of Western Macedonia, Florina, Greece

Cite this paper:
Helen Tsakiridou and Eleni Vavyla. Probability Concepts in Primary School. American Journal of Educational Research. 2015; 3(4):535-540. doi: 10.12691/education-3-4-21

Abstract

In recent years, many countries have tried to incorporate the probability concepts into the curriculum of primary school. The researchers disagree as to what the age of children dealing with probability contents should be. The aim of this study was to investigate the grade of understanding of the probability concepts in primary school students depending on their age and their gender. 404 pupils of the second to the sixth grade of elementary school participated in the study. It has been concluded that the majority of students was able to recognize different events and categorize them depending on their likelihood. The major difference in their abilities was noticed between the children of the second grade and those of the third grade whereas it has been experienced that girls performed better in all the tasks and in all the grades except for the fourth grade in which boys present a slightly better score.

Keywords:
teaching probabilities primary school probability concepts probability tasks

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