Children’s Concepts of Average and Representativeness 1

Mokros, J., & Russell, S. (1995). Children's concepts of average and representativeness. Journal

for Research in Mathematics Education, 26(1), 20-39.

Purpose of the Study/Research Questions

Jan Mokros and Susan Jo Russell conducted this study with the objective of

understanding how children in grades four through eight construct an “average” of a set of data

(1995). The researchers had two questions: “When asked to describe a real data set, how do

children construct and interpret representativeness?” and “How do children understand this

mathematical object and how do they connect it with their informal mathematical learning?”

(Mokros & Russell, 1995, p. 22).

Rationale

The researchers detailed the problem that people of all ages have weak sense what

average means, and that the literature studied by the researchers was missing the component of

representativeness. The authors call for more research that looks at, “how children actually work

within the context of realistic data sets and how they make statistical decisions that allow them to

summarize and make sense of data” (Mokros & Russell, 1995, p. 3)

Method

The authors questioned twenty-one students from a suburban middle school. Those

students had previously been taught how to compute an average algorithmically. The participants

were not given any special instruction on data in their mathematics classes, and they were

selected equally from fourth, sixth, and eighth grade populations (Mokros & Russell, 1995). The

researchers conducted clinical interviews with the students wherein they asked a fixed set and

order of questions that consisted of seven open-ended problems where students either

constructed data sets that were suitable for a given average or interpreted existing data sets in
Children’s Concepts of Average and Representativeness 2

terms of representativeness. The interviewers met one-on-one with participants to ask students to

solve problems that were initially given in a scripted manner with continuation questions being

differentiated.

Researchers reviewed the videos, transcripts, and notes to create a classification system

for the approaches that students preferred overall. Due to the qualitative nature of the study, the

authors used interrater reliability figures when to refine and decide on categories to identify

students’ preferred approaches. To maintain credibility and reliability of their evaluation process,

one student’s data was excluded because the researchers could not agree on that student’s

preferred method.

Results

The researcher found that students fit into one of five predominant approaches to solving

problems involving mean: average as mode, average as algorithm, average as reasonable,

average as midpoint, and aver age as mathematical point of balance (Mokros & Russell, 1994).

The authors further categorized the five predominant approaches into those that do not recognize

the notion of representativeness and those that embody an idea of representativeness.

Conclusions

Mokros and Russell concluded that the concept of mathematical mean is so multifaceted

and complex that it should not be taught until students can demonstrate a firm understanding of

the concept of representativeness stating, “premature introduction of the algorithm for finding

mean may cause a short circuit in the reasoning of some children” (1995, p.37)

Implications

More research into how we come to embody the idea of representativeness is necessary,

but the researchers made a good case for teaching mean in later grades.