HOW CHILDREN WITH DIFFERENT DIALECTS NAVIGATED UNCERTAIN LANGUAGE IN A STATISTICS INVESTIGATION

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Abstract
Language, culture, and conceptions of uncertainty can impact the way that students respond to a statistical investigation. The aim of this small exploratory study was to gain insight into how two groups of children (aged 9-12) speaking different home dialects adopted expressions of uncertainty in a standard dialect used in school, specifically the use of the Marathi word for “about.” One group of children went to a government school where the home dialect differed from the standard dialect, while a second group attended a relatively elite private school where children spoke the standard dialect at home. Our findings suggest that children from both groups did not spontaneously use the word “about” while describing data even when nudged by the researcher to do so, though the children from the second group were more quickly able to adopt the word and use it in the way the researchers expected. The findings have the potential of exploring and impacting the influences of language on the learning of statistics in a non-Western culture.

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