Designing for dispositions

The purpose of this paper is to share the results of the first round of a design experiment, the purpose of which was to intentionally provoke in students particular ways of engaging with statistics. Specifically, in this study, we sought to design a curriculum which would support students’ procedural, conceptual, and critical engagement with content, in order to develop dispositions towards engaging with statistics that involved: viewing representations as reflecting real phenomena; viewing operations and representations as tools that can be intentionally leveraged to develop and support particular arguments; and viewing justification and evidence as crucial components of convincing arguments. We present the design framework and rationale, findings and analysis from the first round of implementation. Implications for both design and learning are discussed.