Dificultades de los estudiantes chilenos de educación básica en la construcción de diagramas de barras

Resum

This research was aimed to identify the 6th and 7th grades Chilean school children’s difficulties in the construction of bar graphs, which are recommended in the curricular guidelines and is the most frequently presented graphic in the Chilean textbooks. We analyse the responses of 745 students to two tasks, in one of which (semiotic complexity 2 graph) students are given a data list, while in the second (semiotic complexity 3 graph) students should form the frequency distribution of data. Results show the higher difficulty in the second graphs, since 80% of students produce correct or partially correct graphs in the first task, this percentage does not reach 50% in the second. There are difficulties related to label assignment, construction of the scales, determination of the variable range, width or separation of bars, omission of values or the representation of non summarized data. The differences between the two groups were not statistically significant.