Original Research

Opportunities and challenges for statistics education in South Africa

Temesgen Zewotir, Delia North
Pythagoras | Vol 32, No 2 | a28 | DOI: https://doi.org/10.4102/pythagoras.v32i2.28 | © 2011 Temesgen Zewotir, Delia North | This work is licensed under CC Attribution 4.0
Submitted: 22 August 2011 | Published: 23 November 2011

About the author(s)

Temesgen Zewotir, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa
Delia North, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

Abstract

The South African educational system is in a state of transformation as the Government embarks on a process of grappling with legacies of the past, whilst balancing risks and opportunities for the future. Accordingly, a new school curriculum with outcomes-based education as the fundamental building block was introduced along a sliding scale, starting in 1997. This curriculum, with a vast statistics content, has the potential to change the face of statistics education in South Africa, as statistics had previously been virtually absent from the school syllabus. This article highlights the challenges to and opportunities for optimising the teaching of statistics across all education levels in South Africa.

Keywords

Outcomes-based Education; statistical literacy; statistical thinking

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Crossref Citations

1. Invoking interactive qualitative analysis as a methodology in statistics education research
Anisha Ananth, Suriamurthee Maistry
The Journal for Transdisciplinary Research in Southern Africa  vol: 16  issue: 1  year: 2020  
doi: 10.4102/td.v16i1.786