Jim Ridgway | Durham University (original) (raw)

Papers by Jim Ridgway

International Statistical Institute eBooks, Mar 25, 2018

Standards-Based School Mathematics Curricula, 2020

The following text is taken from the publisher's website: "The Curriculum and Evaluation... more The following text is taken from the publisher's website: "The Curriculum and Evaluation Standards for School Mathematics published by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics in 1989 set forth a broad vision of mathematical content and pedagogy for grades K-12 in the United States. These Standards prompted the development of Standards-based mathematics curricula. What features characterize Standards-based curricula? How well do such curricula work? To answer these questions, the editors invited researchers who had investigated the implementation of 12 different Standards-based mathematics curricula to describe the effects of these curricula on students' learning and achievement, and to provide evidence for any claims they made. In particular, authors were asked to identify content on which performance of students using Standards-based materials differed from that of students using more traditional materials, and content on which performance of these two groups o...

Proceedings of the Twenty First Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, 2020

An experimental study of task design expertise is reported wherein a set of 12 mathematics tasks ... more An experimental study of task design expertise is reported wherein a set of 12 mathematics tasks were sorted by specialist designers of mathematics tasks and by experienced mathematics teachers without specialist design experience. Contrary to the frequent finding of increasing conceptual depth with increasing expertise, conceptual depth did not differ between groups. Teachers sorted on the basis of mathematical content earlier than designers, and were more specific in their content-based categories. Designers produced more sorts than teachers and were more individualistic in their sorting. These findings suggest that domain expertise does not necessarily impair creative problem solving, as has been suggested in other studies. Instead, expertise includes the ability to shift perspectives with respect to the domain.

84 children divided into 3 age groups (5 yrs to 6 yrs 9 mo, 8 yrs 1 mo to 9 yrs 10 mo, and 10 yrs... more 84 children divided into 3 age groups (5 yrs to 6 yrs 9 mo, 8 yrs 1 mo to 9 yrs 10 mo, and 10 yrs 11 mo to 11 yrs 11 mo) were tested on a memory task before and after being given training in the use of a mnemonic strategy. Half of them were asked a series of questions aimed at making them evaluate their improved performance when using the strategy. All age groups improved their performance after strategy training. However, in the younger groups, only those Ss given performance evaluation questions used the strategy in a subsequent task. On the other hand, 11-yr-olds in the evaluation and nonevaluation groups transferred the strategy to the new task. It is argued that older children spontaneously evaluate their performance, whereas younger children need help. (9 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)

This paper describes two empirical studies that informed the development of a Task Wizard, a comp... more This paper describes two empirical studies that informed the development of a Task Wizard, a computer-based system for presenting task design guidance. Two empirical studies compared specialist task designers with experienced teachers using task design observation and task sorting paradigms. In Study 1, designers worked initially in depth and then worked in breadth before returning to depth-first development, unlike teachers who moved from working in breadth initially to working in depth. In Study 2, designers' classifications of tasks were less dominated by deep conceptual topic-based categories than were those of teachers. These results are the reverse of expert/novice differences identified in the literature and have important implications for theories of design expertise in particular, and complex problemsolving and expertise in general. The studies also provide data on task classifications, evaluative criteria, examples of good and bad designs, and design strategies and practices that informed the development of task design guides. The guides are delivered in the form of a Task Wizard, a computer-based platform for supporting production, adaptation and selection of tasks for classroom activities and examination questions.

In the second set of reflective writings (the first set appears in Chap. 13), another group of pr... more In the second set of reflective writings (the first set appears in Chap. 13), another group of prominent statisticians and statistics educators considers the impact of recent and future developments on both the statistics curriculum and the ways in which it is taught and learned. The two connecting themes in this group of writings are the ubiquitous use of technology and the uses of data in decision making. All of these writings acknowledge, to a greater or lesser extent, the differing future needs of two groups. As citizens, today’s students need to be educated to be critical consumers of data but do not need detailed knowledge of statistical techniques. The much smaller group who will go on to be professionally engaged in the production and analysis of data also need the ability to engage with more technical details. A challenge for statistics education, particularly at school level, is to provide a learning environment which is appropriate for both of these needs, since we do not...

There has been an explosion in the range of tools available for presenting data, many of which ar... more There has been an explosion in the range of tools available for presenting data, many of which are available to support statistics teaching. These include tools that allow users to 'drag and drop' data sets (e.g. RAW), tools designed to display particular data sets (e.g. eXplorer) and software libraries (e.g. D3.js). We report on a review of visualisation tools, where we have described the sorts of visualisations facilitated by each tool, along with features such as ease of use and cost. Data visualisations can give new insights into complex data sets, and can be used directly to reshape teaching. We map out teaching opportunities facilitated by different tool types. Understanding novel data visualisations has become an important element of statistical literacy, and so curricula should expose students to a wide variety of examples. INTRODUCTION Statistics courses should help develop skills necessary for statistical enquiry in realistic settings. The 2016 GAISE guidelines rec...

Although most interesting problems are multivariate (MV) and students and citizens need to be abl... more Although most interesting problems are multivariate (MV) and students and citizens need to be able to reason using MV data, appropriate challenges are rarely encountered in class. In this paper we argue that the curriculum (and ideas about statistical literacy) should encompass reasoning with MV data. Statistics education can occur in a range of disciplines and in informal setting-notably on the web. Strategically, there is a need for dialogue with educators in other disciplines. We also argue for greater collaboration with data providers, who are engaging increasingly in 'People Net' (PN) activities-in short, a reconceptualisation of the education community. The SMART Centre has developed generic software shells that facilitate the import of MV data into interactive displays. We also describe their successful use in Citizenship classrooms where students interpret large-scale survey data on topics such as sexually transmitted infections and drug use. INTRODUCTION School stat...

Real-world problems are complex; the ability to engage with such problems should be an educationa... more Real-world problems are complex; the ability to engage with such problems should be an educational goal. We know little about the effects of exposure to information, or about the cycle of revising personal stories, beliefs and theories, in the light of information and misinformation (IAM). A second emerging educational goal is the ability to reason with IAM. We are working with mash-ups comprising interactive multivariate displays of survey data, and newspaper articles on a particular theme (e.g. smoking, alcohol abuse). We report on the 'natural' statistical skills that pupils display when engaging with the media linked to relevant complex data, and show that some 'big statistical ideas'-such as interaction, and effect size-can be acquired by young students. We argue that the statistics curriculum should be reformed to include qualitative descriptions of large scale multivariate data sets, and to include the critique of rival accounts. EMERGING EDUCATIONAL GOALS The...

Many governments adopt the mantra of 'evidence informed policy' and use 'evidence' to justify pol... more Many governments adopt the mantra of 'evidence informed policy' and use 'evidence' to justify political decisions. Active citizenship requires an understanding of appropriate and inappropriate uses of statistics about society. A number of groups are dedicated to checking the claims made by politicians, and produce commentaries based on careful analyses of data sources and interpretations. Here, we use the commentaries of one such group (Full Fact) as a source of insight into some misleading statements made by politicians. These lead directly to heuristics that can be employed when faced with evidence claims. Further, the examples provide a basis for a framework for conceptualizing 'statistical literacy' in a data rich world.

Teaching Statistics in a Data Rich World IASE Satellite Conference, 2017

Post-truth refers to a climate where emotional reactions and personal beliefs are used more in sh... more Post-truth refers to a climate where emotional reactions and personal beliefs are used more in shaping opinion and forming the basis for political action than is empirical evidence. Contempt for evidence is socially corrosive. It violates the core values of the statistical community, and poses an existential threat to the idea of evidence-informed decision making. The task of developing resistance to post-truth should be shared amongst everyone involved in statistics education. Here, we explore some possible responses as a community; we need to promote a non- partisan approach to promoting respect for high-quality evidence, and reasoning from evidence. We also need to look hard at our implicit acceptance of an ‘evidence-informed’ world view – when does the statistical and scientific community claim too much? After some scene setting (a brief introduction to the problem, and ideas on solutions from groups such as fact-checkers, social media platform providers, and journalists), we ex...

The Routledge Handbook of Census Resources, Methods and Applications, 2017

Teaching Statistics, 2021

The Covid epidemic has provided an excellent example of the need to call on a wide variety of sta... more The Covid epidemic has provided an excellent example of the need to call on a wide variety of statistical tools to address a global problem, and can give students insights into some of the dimensions of data science. Here, we describe some of the characteristics of data that students encounter as citizens. We set out some teaching ideas, which focus on a few familiar core ideas—such as exponential growth, estimation, interpreting graphs, measurement, and sampling—set in the authentic context of containing a pandemic. In the final section, we sketch some more ideas on activities to develop student skills essential for civic engagement in a data‐rich world.

prema.iacm.forth.gr

PREMA was established to explore the under-representation of women in science, technology, engine... more PREMA was established to explore the under-representation of women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). In particular, we were keen to explore:• processes of student decision making• pedagogical factors• socio-cultural factors• the ...

multivariate data as a focus for multiple curriculum

Teaching Statistics in a Data Rich World IASE Satellite Conference

There has been an explosion in the range of tools available for presenting data, many of which ar... more There has been an explosion in the range of tools available for presenting data, many of which are available to support statistics teaching. These include tools that allow users to ‘drag and drop’ data sets (e.g. RAW), tools designed to display particular data sets (e.g. eXplorer) and software libraries (e.g. D3.js). We report on a review of visualisation tools, where we have described the sorts of visualisations facilitated by each tool, along with features such as ease of use and cost. Data visualisations can give new insights into complex data sets, and can be used directly to reshape teaching. We map out teaching opportunities facilitated by different tool types. Understanding novel data visualisations has become an important element of statistical literacy, and so curricula should expose students to a wide variety of examples.

Technology is shaping the ways that evidence is used to influence policy and public opinion. Deve... more Technology is shaping the ways that evidence is used to influence policy and public opinion. Developments include: the semantic web; the Big Data movement, new tools for data visualisation, and the rise of data-driven journalism. Such developments will have profound effects in terms of the nature of evidence that is gathered, the ways in which it is presented and used, and the skills that will be needed for its interpretation. As such they offer opportunities, but also pose threats to both National Statistics Offices (NSOs) and to statistics educators. A great deal is to be gained from collaborations between NSOs, statistics educators, and other groups. Here, we give examples of the ways that technology is influencing practice, and describe a UK collaboration between the Data Visualisation Centre within the Office for National Statistics and the SMART Centre at Durham University, which sets out to work with journalists and policy makers, and uses Big Data tools to explore success. T...

International Statistical Institute eBooks, Mar 25, 2018

Standards-Based School Mathematics Curricula, 2020

The following text is taken from the publisher's website: "The Curriculum and Evaluation... more The following text is taken from the publisher's website: "The Curriculum and Evaluation Standards for School Mathematics published by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics in 1989 set forth a broad vision of mathematical content and pedagogy for grades K-12 in the United States. These Standards prompted the development of Standards-based mathematics curricula. What features characterize Standards-based curricula? How well do such curricula work? To answer these questions, the editors invited researchers who had investigated the implementation of 12 different Standards-based mathematics curricula to describe the effects of these curricula on students' learning and achievement, and to provide evidence for any claims they made. In particular, authors were asked to identify content on which performance of students using Standards-based materials differed from that of students using more traditional materials, and content on which performance of these two groups o...

Proceedings of the Twenty First Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, 2020

An experimental study of task design expertise is reported wherein a set of 12 mathematics tasks ... more An experimental study of task design expertise is reported wherein a set of 12 mathematics tasks were sorted by specialist designers of mathematics tasks and by experienced mathematics teachers without specialist design experience. Contrary to the frequent finding of increasing conceptual depth with increasing expertise, conceptual depth did not differ between groups. Teachers sorted on the basis of mathematical content earlier than designers, and were more specific in their content-based categories. Designers produced more sorts than teachers and were more individualistic in their sorting. These findings suggest that domain expertise does not necessarily impair creative problem solving, as has been suggested in other studies. Instead, expertise includes the ability to shift perspectives with respect to the domain.

84 children divided into 3 age groups (5 yrs to 6 yrs 9 mo, 8 yrs 1 mo to 9 yrs 10 mo, and 10 yrs... more 84 children divided into 3 age groups (5 yrs to 6 yrs 9 mo, 8 yrs 1 mo to 9 yrs 10 mo, and 10 yrs 11 mo to 11 yrs 11 mo) were tested on a memory task before and after being given training in the use of a mnemonic strategy. Half of them were asked a series of questions aimed at making them evaluate their improved performance when using the strategy. All age groups improved their performance after strategy training. However, in the younger groups, only those Ss given performance evaluation questions used the strategy in a subsequent task. On the other hand, 11-yr-olds in the evaluation and nonevaluation groups transferred the strategy to the new task. It is argued that older children spontaneously evaluate their performance, whereas younger children need help. (9 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)

This paper describes two empirical studies that informed the development of a Task Wizard, a comp... more This paper describes two empirical studies that informed the development of a Task Wizard, a computer-based system for presenting task design guidance. Two empirical studies compared specialist task designers with experienced teachers using task design observation and task sorting paradigms. In Study 1, designers worked initially in depth and then worked in breadth before returning to depth-first development, unlike teachers who moved from working in breadth initially to working in depth. In Study 2, designers' classifications of tasks were less dominated by deep conceptual topic-based categories than were those of teachers. These results are the reverse of expert/novice differences identified in the literature and have important implications for theories of design expertise in particular, and complex problemsolving and expertise in general. The studies also provide data on task classifications, evaluative criteria, examples of good and bad designs, and design strategies and practices that informed the development of task design guides. The guides are delivered in the form of a Task Wizard, a computer-based platform for supporting production, adaptation and selection of tasks for classroom activities and examination questions.

In the second set of reflective writings (the first set appears in Chap. 13), another group of pr... more In the second set of reflective writings (the first set appears in Chap. 13), another group of prominent statisticians and statistics educators considers the impact of recent and future developments on both the statistics curriculum and the ways in which it is taught and learned. The two connecting themes in this group of writings are the ubiquitous use of technology and the uses of data in decision making. All of these writings acknowledge, to a greater or lesser extent, the differing future needs of two groups. As citizens, today’s students need to be educated to be critical consumers of data but do not need detailed knowledge of statistical techniques. The much smaller group who will go on to be professionally engaged in the production and analysis of data also need the ability to engage with more technical details. A challenge for statistics education, particularly at school level, is to provide a learning environment which is appropriate for both of these needs, since we do not...

There has been an explosion in the range of tools available for presenting data, many of which ar... more There has been an explosion in the range of tools available for presenting data, many of which are available to support statistics teaching. These include tools that allow users to 'drag and drop' data sets (e.g. RAW), tools designed to display particular data sets (e.g. eXplorer) and software libraries (e.g. D3.js). We report on a review of visualisation tools, where we have described the sorts of visualisations facilitated by each tool, along with features such as ease of use and cost. Data visualisations can give new insights into complex data sets, and can be used directly to reshape teaching. We map out teaching opportunities facilitated by different tool types. Understanding novel data visualisations has become an important element of statistical literacy, and so curricula should expose students to a wide variety of examples. INTRODUCTION Statistics courses should help develop skills necessary for statistical enquiry in realistic settings. The 2016 GAISE guidelines rec...

Although most interesting problems are multivariate (MV) and students and citizens need to be abl... more Although most interesting problems are multivariate (MV) and students and citizens need to be able to reason using MV data, appropriate challenges are rarely encountered in class. In this paper we argue that the curriculum (and ideas about statistical literacy) should encompass reasoning with MV data. Statistics education can occur in a range of disciplines and in informal setting-notably on the web. Strategically, there is a need for dialogue with educators in other disciplines. We also argue for greater collaboration with data providers, who are engaging increasingly in 'People Net' (PN) activities-in short, a reconceptualisation of the education community. The SMART Centre has developed generic software shells that facilitate the import of MV data into interactive displays. We also describe their successful use in Citizenship classrooms where students interpret large-scale survey data on topics such as sexually transmitted infections and drug use. INTRODUCTION School stat...

Real-world problems are complex; the ability to engage with such problems should be an educationa... more Real-world problems are complex; the ability to engage with such problems should be an educational goal. We know little about the effects of exposure to information, or about the cycle of revising personal stories, beliefs and theories, in the light of information and misinformation (IAM). A second emerging educational goal is the ability to reason with IAM. We are working with mash-ups comprising interactive multivariate displays of survey data, and newspaper articles on a particular theme (e.g. smoking, alcohol abuse). We report on the 'natural' statistical skills that pupils display when engaging with the media linked to relevant complex data, and show that some 'big statistical ideas'-such as interaction, and effect size-can be acquired by young students. We argue that the statistics curriculum should be reformed to include qualitative descriptions of large scale multivariate data sets, and to include the critique of rival accounts. EMERGING EDUCATIONAL GOALS The...

Many governments adopt the mantra of 'evidence informed policy' and use 'evidence' to justify pol... more Many governments adopt the mantra of 'evidence informed policy' and use 'evidence' to justify political decisions. Active citizenship requires an understanding of appropriate and inappropriate uses of statistics about society. A number of groups are dedicated to checking the claims made by politicians, and produce commentaries based on careful analyses of data sources and interpretations. Here, we use the commentaries of one such group (Full Fact) as a source of insight into some misleading statements made by politicians. These lead directly to heuristics that can be employed when faced with evidence claims. Further, the examples provide a basis for a framework for conceptualizing 'statistical literacy' in a data rich world.

Teaching Statistics in a Data Rich World IASE Satellite Conference, 2017

Post-truth refers to a climate where emotional reactions and personal beliefs are used more in sh... more Post-truth refers to a climate where emotional reactions and personal beliefs are used more in shaping opinion and forming the basis for political action than is empirical evidence. Contempt for evidence is socially corrosive. It violates the core values of the statistical community, and poses an existential threat to the idea of evidence-informed decision making. The task of developing resistance to post-truth should be shared amongst everyone involved in statistics education. Here, we explore some possible responses as a community; we need to promote a non- partisan approach to promoting respect for high-quality evidence, and reasoning from evidence. We also need to look hard at our implicit acceptance of an ‘evidence-informed’ world view – when does the statistical and scientific community claim too much? After some scene setting (a brief introduction to the problem, and ideas on solutions from groups such as fact-checkers, social media platform providers, and journalists), we ex...

The Routledge Handbook of Census Resources, Methods and Applications, 2017

Teaching Statistics, 2021

The Covid epidemic has provided an excellent example of the need to call on a wide variety of sta... more The Covid epidemic has provided an excellent example of the need to call on a wide variety of statistical tools to address a global problem, and can give students insights into some of the dimensions of data science. Here, we describe some of the characteristics of data that students encounter as citizens. We set out some teaching ideas, which focus on a few familiar core ideas—such as exponential growth, estimation, interpreting graphs, measurement, and sampling—set in the authentic context of containing a pandemic. In the final section, we sketch some more ideas on activities to develop student skills essential for civic engagement in a data‐rich world.

prema.iacm.forth.gr

PREMA was established to explore the under-representation of women in science, technology, engine... more PREMA was established to explore the under-representation of women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). In particular, we were keen to explore:• processes of student decision making• pedagogical factors• socio-cultural factors• the ...

multivariate data as a focus for multiple curriculum

Teaching Statistics in a Data Rich World IASE Satellite Conference

There has been an explosion in the range of tools available for presenting data, many of which ar... more There has been an explosion in the range of tools available for presenting data, many of which are available to support statistics teaching. These include tools that allow users to ‘drag and drop’ data sets (e.g. RAW), tools designed to display particular data sets (e.g. eXplorer) and software libraries (e.g. D3.js). We report on a review of visualisation tools, where we have described the sorts of visualisations facilitated by each tool, along with features such as ease of use and cost. Data visualisations can give new insights into complex data sets, and can be used directly to reshape teaching. We map out teaching opportunities facilitated by different tool types. Understanding novel data visualisations has become an important element of statistical literacy, and so curricula should expose students to a wide variety of examples.

Technology is shaping the ways that evidence is used to influence policy and public opinion. Deve... more Technology is shaping the ways that evidence is used to influence policy and public opinion. Developments include: the semantic web; the Big Data movement, new tools for data visualisation, and the rise of data-driven journalism. Such developments will have profound effects in terms of the nature of evidence that is gathered, the ways in which it is presented and used, and the skills that will be needed for its interpretation. As such they offer opportunities, but also pose threats to both National Statistics Offices (NSOs) and to statistics educators. A great deal is to be gained from collaborations between NSOs, statistics educators, and other groups. Here, we give examples of the ways that technology is influencing practice, and describe a UK collaboration between the Data Visualisation Centre within the Office for National Statistics and the SMART Centre at Durham University, which sets out to work with journalists and policy makers, and uses Big Data tools to explore success. T...