Teaching average through implementing cognitively demanding statistical tasks

The purpose of this study is a)to investigate how a mathematics teacher implements cognitively demanding statistical tasks(CDST) and b)how student learning occurs during the implementation of such tasks. The study is a case study with a mathematics teacher. Two 7th grade classes were observed during the lessons in which statistics were taught. The focus is to explain teaching practices about CDST in the context of teaching average. Therefore, 8 lessons and the student artifacts were analyzed. The unit of analysis is CDST; The Mathematical Task Framework(MTF) and Task Analysis Guide(TAG) were used to analyze CDST (Stein&Lane,1996). The results showed that when the teacher was provided with CDSTs, she implemented most of them in highlevel that in turn provides high learning gains to the students.