Hello, I’m Hollylynne Lee and I’m here with Chris Franklin, and Chris was the Lead Author for

the 2007 Report from the American Statistical Association called, The Guidelines for Assessment

and Instruction in Statistics Education, this is often referred to as the GAISE Report. The

GAISE framework that was integrated into that document really use the four phases of statistical

investigation; pose, collect, analyze, interpret, and it really laid out the developmental levels of

what one can expect, someone at Level A, Level B, and Level C to be able to do within each of

those phases. So could you talk a little bit about why this report was developed and why you

took so much time putting that framework together?

You want the short version.

The short version, yes.

Well, actually what happened is that, I think, we in statistics education felt like we were making

a lot of momentum in terms of statistics education being infused at K through 12. Most

particularly when AP statistics came on board in the late 1990’s, and then, of course, in 2000

NCTM published their Principles and Standards for School Mathematics, and what was fabulous

for those of us in statistics education is we had our own strand.

Right.

Which was data analysis and probability. So I think that many of us felt like that what with the

popularity of AP statistics growing, as well as, with NCTM that we were well on our way to

really seeing statistics integrated at K through 12. Actually, I think what happened was a couple

of things where the momentum started dying down a bit for K through 12. One reason I think, is

because AP statistics was becoming so popular that a lot of states, as well as, school districts

took the approach, “Well, we’ll just emphasis statistics at the high school level, we have AP

statistics now, this is a great course”, but I think the other reason, which went along with that is

that people were really confused and struggling with how to interpret the data analysis and

probability strand that was in the NCTM standards. And I think part of the reason they were

having trouble interpreting those standards is that as they went from one grade level to the next,

they were actually reading the same thing. They were having trouble differentiating, well, how

do I teach this concept at grade 3 versus how I teach this concept at grade 8? Actually, I think,

sort of light bulb moment for many of us that this document needed to be written was at a

conference that was held at the University of Georgia in 2003 called “The Teens Conference”,

and you were there Holly, which was a great conference, but if you’ll remember Johnny Lott was

our keynote speaker.

I do, I remember that.

And Johnny Lott was President of NCTM at that time, and Johnny, in his keynote address,

looked out into the audience and he said, “I have a question for the statisticians, can you please

help me understand, “what is the difference in the mean at the elementary level versus the middle

school level versus the high school level?” He said, “When I look at the NCTM standards, I’m

seeing that you need to teach the mean of all of these different levels, but I don’t understand

what’s the difference?”

Very valid question.

A very valid question, and in a few minutes we’re going to look at how we ended up resolving

that, at least, hopefully, in this document we did. But that was a light bulb moment for us to

realize that was a part of…a big reason for people holding back on infusing statistics into their

K-12 standards, is they were having trouble understanding how to interpret the evolution of these

standards at the different levels. We also realized that people were having trouble understanding

how to go beyond just analyzing data. That traditionally what statistics had been taught at K-12

was where you were given the data set, you created a graph, you calculated some numerical

summaries, and you were done. You were done and that’s not what statistics is about as you,

hopefully, all well know. It’s about developing a statistical question that needs to be answered

by collecting data, and then you analyze the data, and then you try to interpret the results back to

the original question, in fact, the analysis of the data is really a very small part of what we do in

statistics.

Right, but most of our curricula up to that point really was emphasizing just that.

It was really emphasizing the analysis, and so, I would say these are all motivating reasons for

why the American Statistical Association felt like that there needed to be a document that could

complement and be a companion to the NCTM standards to help with how concepts evolve, as

well as, the statistical investigative process, the posing questions; how to collect data, analyzing,

as well as, interpretation. If ASA had not had the vision when they did, to produce this

document...

Right, statistics would have probably…

I’m not sure we would see any statistics in the Common Core standards. That document was

there, it was on the table.

Yeah, that’s good.

And, I think, that that was really where we’ve had our biggest impact, but we’ve also had impact,

I think, with teacher education programs. There have been teacher education programs even

before the Common Core standards that recognize the importance of statistics and teacher

preparation, and this was the one document, besides the NCTM standards, that they were turning

to.

That’s right. As a math teacher educator, I could go to that document and think about how I

could integrate it into my methods courses for my future teachers.

And I will say one other thing, I know that we came out with this document in 2007 and it was

soon after that New Zealand starting working and revising their national standards, and it was

 our GAISE Framework document from the US that they used in New Zealand to incorporate this

revision of the statistics in their standards for K through 12.

Right, so…

So, it’s had an impact internationally as well. So it’s turned out that it’s been a very useful

document, and…and ASA, I think, should be very proud that they had the vision.