When letters meet numbers: Contextualized short stories in statistics and probability

Abstract

The desire of this design research was to create contextualized short stories by understanding the difficulties encountered by the learners in Statistics and Probability as well as their reading habits and preferences. The participants of the survey were the 289 randomly chosen Grade 11 learners. Eight learners, who had at least a high difficulty level in Statistics and Probability and belong to the different type of readers, were chosen for the interview using purposive sampling. Thirty-eight learners participated in the implementation, and they, together with 12 teachers and experts, also evaluated the short stories. The data were subjected to both quantitative and qualitative data analysis. Mean, standard deviation, frequency, and percentage were used for quantitative analysis, while thematic analysis was utilized for qualitative data for quantitative analysis, while thematic analysis was utilized for qualitative data analysis. The results revealed that the learners had a high level of difficulty in some concepts of Statistics and Probability and that include topics in normal random variable and its characteristics, parameter and statistic, central limit theorem, bivariate data, and characteristics, parameter and statistic, central limit theorem, bivariate data, and independent and dependent variable. Lack of interest, lack of explanation, lack of time, and inadequacy of materials were the reasons why learners found the subject to be difficult. Moreover, most of the learners were moderate and dormant readers and they usually spent less than an hour reading. The following features of the short stories were drawn from the results of the study: contextualized, illustrated, concise, value-laden, and printable. The teachers, experts, and learners found the short stories to be highly acceptable. Moreover, the learners expressed that the short stories were relatable, easy to understand, interesting and enjoyable, and morally instructive. Teachers are advised to incorporate short stories in their lesson and create other reading materials. Researchers may also study the impact of short stories on the learners' performance.