Strategies of teaching statistics starting from the mental models (Paperback)

The idea of this paper came as a result of observation for certain years of the way in which students in their first year of study pertained at the subjects of study they had to analyze. As we know, in the first year the academic curriculum includes fundamental subjects of study of different types, all of them having the role of forming the first professional knowledge and skills. Statistics, as we observed in the talks with the students, has a sad and undeserved fame of difficult subject, hardly approachable that solicits advanced preliminary knowledge from the students and at which is highly likely to get a good grade. Our efforts to improve the perception and the results of the students that finalize the statistics course were ulterior seen, gradually, while we were introducing more new elements in the teaching style, changing the way of interaction with them, stimulating more the reasoning of the young students I was working with. Regarding the above, the present paper aims at investigating, from the psychological point of view, the way in which we could identify mental models activated when the subjects interact with a subject of study.