Research on Data Analysis Literacy of High School Students in China

Abstract

Data analysis is an important mathematical technique for studying random phenomena and a major method for mathematical applications in the era of big data. For students, the stage of high school is a critical period to form and develop their data analysis ability, so scholars have paid a lot of attention to the issue of education about data analysis literacy of high school students. However, there is a lack of systematic organization of the literature. In order to help researchers grasp the current status of research and promote further investigation, this paper summarizes relevant literature in China and analyzes the research results. The following conclusions are drawn from the summary and analysis of previous studies: 1. Previous studies on data analysis literacy of high school students have focused on five main aspects: basic connotation, cognitive status, influencing factors, cultivation strategies and evaluation methods; 2. Among them, cognitive status and cultivation strategies are the hot issues; 3. In terms of research methods, scholars mostly use pencil-and-paper tests, questionnaires or interviews to investigate cognitive status, and analyze the influencing factors and cultivation strategies just with theoretical thinking; 4. In previous studies, there are shortcomings of single research method and lack of empirical practice, while the previous researches on influencing factors are not systematic or comprehensive. The research conclusions on cultivation strategies lack feasibility or validity, and the researches on evaluation methods are relatively scarce. Therefore, scholars can start from the evaluation method to explore a reasonable and feasible evaluation system with high audience. It is necessary for scholars to further improve the research methods on the influencing factors and cultivation strategies in future studies, and to conduct more in-depth and systematic researches on the influencing factors of data analysis literacy from an empirical perspective, in order to find out more comprehensive influencing factors and more operable cultivation strategies.