Effects of gender and socioeconomic status towards Form Four Pupils’ statistical thinking abilities / Ong Jing Hui

Ong , Jing Hui (2020) Effects of gender and socioeconomic status towards Form Four Pupils’ statistical thinking abilities / Ong Jing Hui. Masters thesis, Universiti Malaya.

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Abstract

Statistical thinking abilities of Form Four students are not known as there is a lack of studies that measures it. Despite the fact that the students were exposed to the same curriculum and pedagogy, the thinking abilities of students varied in terms of gender. There is also uncertainty in whether socio-economic status is a cause that affects statistical thinking abilities due to lack of research in that particular area. This study aimed to examine the effects of gender and socio-economic status on statistical thinking abilities of Form Four students. To answer the three research questions of this study, survey descriptive design and causal comparative design were employed. 180 Form Four students (90 males, 90 females) of three socio-economic status groups mainly low socio-economic status group (N = 65), middle socio-economic status group (N = 98), and high socio-economic status group (N = 17) from several secondary schools in the area of Shah Alam, Selangor participated in this study. Statistical thinking abilities consist of three levels mainly ability to organize and reduce data, ability to represent data, and ability to analyze and interpret data. An instrument called the Statistical Thinking Abilities Test (STAT) was used to measure Form Four students’ statistical thinking abilities levels. The result of analysis of descriptive statistics showed that most Form Four students were at level 1 (42.2%) and level 2 (46.1%) of statistical thinking abilities levels. The result from the Mann-Whitney U test revealed that the level of statistical thinking abilities of male students (Mean rank = 95.61) was different with female students (Mean rank = 85.39). The result indicated no significant differences of students’ statistical thinking abilities by gender, U = 3590, p = .148. The result from Kruskal Wallis H test shown significant differences in students’ statistical thinking abilities by socio-economic status, χ2(2) = 34.591, p = .001, with mean rank statistical thinking abilities low socio-economic status (60.07), middle socio-economic status (101.06), and high socio-economic status (145.97). This study has implication to teachers, researchers, curriculum planners, and teaching educators. Teachers are able to utilize the rubric to gauge the statistical thinking abilities levels of the students and prepare suitable lesson plans accordingly. Researchers can pursue further study by looking at other factors that affect statistical thinking abilities and the interaction effect among them. Curriculum planners benefit from this study through better understanding of the statistical thinking abilities to incorporate them into the mathematics curriculum. Teaching educators also benefit from this study by utilizing the ideas and operations of statistical thinking abilities to monitor students’ development pace of statistical thinking abilities from various socio-economic status backgrounds. In conclusion, past researches’ findings shown gaps in students’ statistical thinking in comprehending statistical concepts, which prompted the study to measure the statistical thinking abilities levels of Form Four students and the factors that affect it. The findings shown evidence of significant effect of socio-economic status on statistical thinking abilities of Form Four students where most of them are at the first and second level of statistical thinking abilities.

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