Topic Study Group 36: Research and development in assessment and testing in mathematics education

The use of measurement tools to evaluate and monitor the knowledge acquired by students is increasingly necessary and this has motivated researchers of different areas, among them the Statistics and the Statistical Education, to seek by more sophisticated tools to be used in quantitative processes of analysis for these evaluations. In view of this, it’s extremely important that Basic Education teachers are well prepared to understand the statistical language to, afterwards, come into contact with different sorts of data analysis and also have the opportunity of drawing comparisons with the results released from the official educational evaluations, improving their understanding about them, that, in many cases, are presented in a highly sophisticated language and, many times, not understandable. In the midst of this discussion, our general purpose is to do a literature and documentary search about the educational evaluations, to map the way the data are being analyzed and the results are being disclosed, especially the respect to the Statistical contents they contain. We intend by this paper to contribute to a greater understanding of the statistical language used in the dissemination of the results from the big educational evaluations. We are starting our search by the statistics questions proposed in ENEM – Exame Nacional de Ensino Médio, which is an important educational evaluation applied to students who are finishing High School in Brazil, and we could notice that the statistical contents demanded refer to the analysis of graphics and charts, combinatorial analysis and probability.

Thanks: CNPq and PUC-Campinas.