Combining a constructive rural orientation with academic quality: High school outstations in Papua New Guinea

In common with other states, Papua New Guinea is addressing the problem of preparing educated young people to re-enter rural life and take up forms of self-employment. The Secondary Schools Community Extension Project is the newest of a line of experiments. This paper describes the philosophy of the project and focuses on a detailed observation of a key component, the outstation, in two of the pilot schools.A central concept is the integration of practical activities, preferably in cooperation with the people of a village, with the normal academic curriculum of the secondary school. The aim is of course to avoid conflict between the objectives of the project and the objectives of the students for success in the final examinations. The integration is facilitated by the style of the examinations, which are skill, rather than content based.The two pilot schools differed, each succeeding in some objectives but doing less well in others. Overall, the verdict is that the experiment promises to be of value in the transition from school to work in a predominantly rural developing country.     

Hey - what's the big idea?

A ‘big idea’ in statistics can fail to register with students when it is obscured by finer details of lesson tasks or activities. Based on the graphics calculator, this article describes a lesson designed to introduce the Central Limit Theorem.     

Young Students’Informal Statistical Knowledge

This article reports some results of an informal study of very young children's reactions to some visual displays of data.