Impact of Gender and Grade level on Graph Literacy skills among Finnish Grade 6 and 8 students
Ali, Aisha (2024)
2024
Master's Programme in Teaching, Learning and Media Education
Kasvatustieteiden ja kulttuurin tiedekunta - Faculty of Education and Culture
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Hyväksymispäivämäärä
2024-12-12
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:tuni-2024120310703
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:tuni-2024120310703
Tiivistelmä
In today’s fast paced world, graphs have become increasingly important to convey large amounts of information concisely. Thus, it has become important for students to be graphically literate. However, only a few studies have focused on the graph literacy skills of Finnish students till date.
This study uses a quantitative approach to investigate the impact of influencing factors such as gender and grade level on graph literacy among Finnish Grade 6 and Grade 8 students. Graph literacy has been measured by breaking it into subskills introduced by Curcio (1987) and Shaughnessy et al. (1996): read the data, read between the data and read behind the data.
A total of 284 Finnish middle-school students with a mean age of 13.60 (SD = 1.10) participated in the study. Students were first introduced to the features of the online task environment. Later, they finished the math tasks and graph reading tasks at their own pace within the time constraints.
The results indicate that gender and grade level do not play a significant role in predicting performance in graph literacy as compared to cognitive factors such as math fluency. While students excelled at basic graph reading (read the data level), they struggled with more advanced tasks like comparing multiple data points, performing calculations and identifying misrepresentations (‘read between the data’ and ‘read behind the data’ level). These findings suggest a need for curriculum enhancements and targeted instruction to develop advanced graph reading skills including critical graphs, ensuring students can assess data more accurately.
This study uses a quantitative approach to investigate the impact of influencing factors such as gender and grade level on graph literacy among Finnish Grade 6 and Grade 8 students. Graph literacy has been measured by breaking it into subskills introduced by Curcio (1987) and Shaughnessy et al. (1996): read the data, read between the data and read behind the data.
A total of 284 Finnish middle-school students with a mean age of 13.60 (SD = 1.10) participated in the study. Students were first introduced to the features of the online task environment. Later, they finished the math tasks and graph reading tasks at their own pace within the time constraints.
The results indicate that gender and grade level do not play a significant role in predicting performance in graph literacy as compared to cognitive factors such as math fluency. While students excelled at basic graph reading (read the data level), they struggled with more advanced tasks like comparing multiple data points, performing calculations and identifying misrepresentations (‘read between the data’ and ‘read behind the data’ level). These findings suggest a need for curriculum enhancements and targeted instruction to develop advanced graph reading skills including critical graphs, ensuring students can assess data more accurately.