TinkerPlots as a Research Tool to Explore Student Understanding

This paper explores the use of the dynamic software package, TinkerPlots, as a research tool to assist in assessing students' understanding of aspects of beginning inference. Two interview protocols used previously with middle school students in printed format without computer software were introduced to a new sample of students through data sets entered in TinkerPlots. The later group of students had experienced a series of lessons using TinkerPlots but the activities were based on different data sets. Of interest in this exploratory study is an analysis of the affordances provided by TinkerPlots to researchers in their quest to assist students in explaining their thinking about the data sets. These are considered in relation to those provided by the format of the earlier interviews.