The contextualized situations constructed for the use of statistics by school mathematics textbooks3

Abstract

The consideration of context is crucial in the discipline of statistics. In this paper, I present a Foucauldian discourse analysis (FDA) of two popular high school mathematics textbook series in the United States investigating what contextual situations they construct for the (re)use of statistics. As FDA is a novel approach in statistics education, an extended discussion is provided to help show a rationale for its use and to provide a foundation for others. An important finding is that the contextualized situations presented in both textbook series are predominantly fictional, neutral, and provide limited raw data. The findings have implications for the teaching and learning of statistics in view of recent calls for more focus on data and statistical literacy in schools.