THE GAISE PROJECT Develops Statistics Education Guidelines for K-12 and College Courses

Joan Garfield
University of Minnesota
jbg@umn.edu

Newsletter for the Section on Statistical Education
Volume 10, Number 1 (Spring 2004)

A draft of the new proposed college guidelines for instruction and assessment in statistics education is now available for review and feedback at http://it.stlawu.edu/~rlock/gaise. These guidelines were developed by the GAISE project, a strategic initiative grant from the ASA.

Building on the recommendations of the past two presidents, the ASA Advisory Committee on Teacher Enhancement (ACTE), chaired by Robert Stephenson, proposed a strategic initiative grant to develop ASA-endorsed guidelines for assessment and instruction in statistics in the K-12 curriculum and for the introductory college statistics course. This project was funded by ASA last spring and is making good progress towards achieving these goals.

The work of each focus group is building on:

• Existing standards and guidelines
• Relevant research results from the studies of teaching and learning statistics
• Data on assessment items used in large scale and high stakes tests
• Recent discussions and recommendations regarding the need to focus instruction and assessment on the important concepts that underlie statistical reasoning

After sufficient revisions are made, the guidelines will be submitted to the ASA Board of Directors for endorsement. For further information please contact Christine Franklin (chris@stat.uga.edu) or Joan Garfield (jbg@umn.edu).