Abstract:

Among the skills, that seem to be the most sought after in the 21st century, there are basic skills, in addition to literacy and numeracy skills, such as: ICT, financial, cultural and civic literacy; and also key competencies, such as: critical thinking, creativity, communication and collaboration (World Economic Forum Reports, Davos, 2018).

One of the main and today extremely desirable aspects of the numeracy skill is the ability to think in nondeterministic way which in formal education is developed in the process of learning probability and statistics.

As it is evident in school practice, the development of nondeterministic thinking seems to be one of the most difficult mathematical cognitive processes. Therefore the methods of diagnosing the level of understanding probabilistic and statistical concepts are very important from the point of view of the work of a teacher.

In this article I will present the main results of my research on recognizing main levels in learner's cognitive development of probabilistic and statistical thinking and I will show how it can be useful in creating an effective approach to teaching and in arranging a process of learning, according to the nature of nondeterministic thinking.

These considerations are based on the results of studying the phenomenology of probabilistic and statistical concepts and on the explorations of the process of probability and statistics learning in today's school classroom and academic classroom. Examples and proposals of applying results of this research for educational purposes will be presented.

Keywords:

Cognitive development of probabilistic and statistical concepts, non-deterministic thinking, probability and statistics learning.