Suggestions for using GeoGebra to teach descriptive statistics in 10. grade

Abstract

The Introduction: The third improvement of the National Education System in Cuba has among its objectives in pre-university education the use of GeoGebra in mathematics classes. The lack of preparation of teachers for the use of this mathematical assistant motivated the present work with the objective of proposing methodological suggestions for the treatment of the content of descriptive statistics in 10th grade with the use of GeoGebra. Materials and methods: The research was descriptive in nature, using a mixed approach that integrated quantitative and qualitative aspects in the analysis of the instruments used to diagnose and validate the proposal. A purposive sample of 30 students and eight mathematics specialists were used to validate the proposal. Methods such as teacher interviews, classroom observations, and documentary review were used. The results of the diagnostic assessment revealed that teachers are adequately prepared to teach descriptive statistics, but are not adequately prepared to use GeoGebra to address this content. Furthermore, students performed poorly on the test administered for this content. Therefore, 10 exercises are proposed with suggestions on how to use GeoGebra to solve them using the tools or the assistant's input bar. Discussion: For validation, three workshops were used to train teachers, and a survey was conducted at the end of the workshops. This allowed teachers to obtain satisfaction and motivation criteria for using this assistant in mathematics classes, and specifically for addressing descriptive statistics. Conclusions: The proposed suggestions guide teachers' actions in using GeoGebra to address the reference content.