Lessons from Inferentialism for Statistics Education

This theoretical paper relates recent interest in informal statistical inference (ISI) to the semantic theory termed inferentialism, a significant development in contemporary philosophy, which places inference at the heart of human knowing. This theory assists epistemological reflection on challenges in statistics education encountered when designing for the teaching or learning of ISI. We suggest that inferentialism can serve as a valuable theoretical resource for reform efforts that advocate ISI. To illustrate what it means to privilege an inferentialist approach to teaching statistics, we give examples from two sixth-grade classes (age 11) learning to draw informal statistical inferences while developing key concepts such as center, variation, distribution, and sample without losing sight of problem contexts.