Inferring to a model: using inquiry-based argumentation to challenge young children's expectations of equally likely outcomes

Children's informal reasoning about uncertainty can be considered a product of their beliefs, language, and experiences, much of which is formed outside of formal schooling. As a result, students can adopt informal intuitions that are incompatible with formal reasoning. Although the creation of cognitive conflict has been considered as one means of challenging students' understandings, prior research in probability suggests that students may simultaneously hold multiple, incompatible understandings without conflict arising. Design-based methodology was adopted to investigate young (7–8 years old) students' inferential reasoning under uncertainty, using an inquiry-based unit developed around addition bingo. This paper selectively reports on students' inferences that initially suggested they were tacitly working from a uniform distribution (equiprobability bias), but shifted as students collected empirical data (from a discrete symmetric triangular distribution). Their inferences were challenged using an argumentation framework, with particular emphasis on the need for defensible evidence. Initial findings suggest potential for argumentation and inferential approaches that make students’ conceptions explicit through 'visibilizing' their knowledge.