Educ Stud Math (2014) 86:239251

DOI 10.1007/s10649-011-9363-9

Linking academic knowledge and professional experience

in using statistics: a design experiment for business
school students
Corinne Hahn

Published online: 26 November 2011

# Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011

Abstract The aim of the empirical study presented in this paper is to explore how students
link academic knowledge with workplace experience. I carried out a research study with a
group of 36 business school students entering a 3-year masters level apprenticeship
programme. In an introductory statistics course, I designed and implemented a four-step
learning activity, based on an Exploratory Data Analysis approach and inspired by an
authentic workplace situation. I report the findings of qualitative research based on the
recorded discussions between students and the reports they wrote at each step in the
experience. I found that three different forms of rationalitytechnical, pragmatic and
scientificled them to shape the problem differently. I observed that they hardly used
statistical tools because pragmatic rationality which is linked to their experience as
salespersons prevails, although access to a managerial approach suggests the use of more
statistical knowledge.
Keywords Statistics . Apprenticeship . Management . Decision making . Rationality
Over the past decades, a number of studies have addressed the problem of the transitions
between school mathematics and out-of-school mathematics. The seminal works of Lave
(1988) and Nunes, Schliemann and Carraher (1993), drawing on anthropological methods,
focus on sociocultural activities in which mathematics is embedded. They analysed out-ofschool practices and highlighted the difficulties experienced by subjects in linking out-ofschool activities to academic knowledge.
Many researchers have focused their interest on mathematical practices in workplaces
and provided a wide range of outcomes from different industries (Bessot & Ridgway, 2000;
Hoyles, Noss, Kent & Bakker, 2010; Noss, Hoyles & Pozzi, 2000; Roth, this issue;
Triantafillou & Potari, 2010). Beyond the acknowledgement of the existence of two
different types of practices (out-of-school and academic) and of the difficulty workers
experience using mathematics, the question is how to help these workers to broaden their
C. Hahn (*)
ESCP Europe, Paris, France
e-mail: hahn@escpeurope.eu

240

C. Hahn

perspective by integrating mathematical knowledge to their work. Specific tools designed

for adult workers such as technology-enhanced boundary objects (Hoyles et al., 2010) are
one possible answer. More generally, researchers often recommend the use of authentic
situations in educational programmes (Nunes et al., 1993; Steen & Forman, 2000;
Triantafillou & Potari, 2010). Nevertheless, introducing work reality into the classroom is
not an easy task, as the epistemologies of work practices related to mathematics differ from
school mathematics (Noss et al., 2000). At school, reality has to be adjusted by the teacher;
problems are drafted in order to fit classroom goals (Freudenthal, 1991). Thus, as claimed
by Abreu (2000), there is a need to explore more deeply the relationship between the
microcontext of the mathematics classroom, and the macrocontext of the sociocultural
environment, in order to gain some insight into the way learners decide on their actions.
Vocational education takes on many different forms in different countries, but
apprenticeship is a common form, dating as far back as the Middle Ages. In France, it is
based on a real partnership between school and businesses, a partnership whose terms are
strictly legally defined, both nationally and regionally. One of its main characteristics is the
focus on the learner, seen not as a student or a professional who on some occasions travels
to the other world, but as a full member of both worldsa difficult position to manage (Star
& Griesemer, 1989). Because the French apprenticeship system is based on a dual joint
integration in two worlds, school and industry, it appears to us particularly suitable for
observing the reciprocal influence of the school and workplace on learners' behaviours
(Hahn, 2000).
In this article, I present a design experiment (Cobb et al., 2003) whose main goal is to
explore how students link academic knowledge with workplace experience. The research
field of management education appears particularly suited to the examination of academic
disciplines in real-life context: Although academic disciplines play an important role in the
curricula, their role in the workplace is difficult to grasp, as management is largely based on
informal, collective and unstable situations, and the results of managers' actions are not
always clear.
I conducted the research with a group of 36 business school students entering a 3-year
masters level apprenticeship programme in order to explore how these students linked
academic knowledge and workplace experience. To achieve my goal, I implemented, in an
introductory statistics course, a learning activity, specifically designed for this research
study, based on the use of an Exploratory Data Analysis (EDA) approach and inspired by
an authentic workplace situation.
The first part of this article presents my theoretical framework. The second part describes
the methodology and experimental procedure employed in the experiment. Finally, I
summarise and discuss the results obtained from the experiment.

1 Theoretical framework
1.1 To learn between school and workplace
Although referring to different theoretical frameworks which emphasise either the cultural
or the cognitive dimension, some authors agree that learning appears to occur through a
dialectical processbetween conceptualisations in action, embedded in the setting in which
they occur, and theories or scientific conceptswhether these authors stress the
continuity between these two forms of thinking (Noss et al., 2000) or the discontinuity
(Pastr, Vergnaud & Mayen, 2006). A dialectical learning process implies the construction

Linking academic knowledge and professional experience

241

of an internal space where different levels of generalisation play, work or compete together
(Brossard, 2008). In fact, this means not only different levels of generalisation but also
different conceptual fields, as defined by Vergnaud (1990). His cognitive model of
complexity gives an essential role to concepts, seen as a set of invariants used in action.
Regional epistemologies (Bachelard, 1970), specific to each discipline, lead to differently
defined conceptual fields. The problem is to think of their articulation with professional
fields, structured around situations and not around problems: The learner has to select
knowledge from one conceptual field that s/he thinks will be useful in order to perform a
specific action (Pastr, 2007). But how does the learner select this knowledge? We are not
only driven by bounded rationality (Simon, 1991), and the decision-making process is not a
simple question of information processing. Our rationality, developed through our
participation in different communities, is shaped by values and beliefs of which we are
mostly unaware. Not all of this tacit knowledge can be codified and it shapes not only the
means but also the evaluation of the ends (Polanyi, 1966). Scientific rationality as it is
developed at schoolexplicit logical reasoningcoexists with other social forms of
rationality. The way the learner solves a problem depends on what the problem means to
her/him. According to Vergnaud, drawing on Piaget, schemes that organise subjects' actions
and allow them to interact with their environment are associated with a set of situations.
Thus, in a classroom context, the procedure used to solve a problem varies depending on
the situation with which the student associates the problem, and the personal goal s/he
builds for the activity. This explains why learners use different strategies in different
environments (Hahn, 2000; Slj &Wyndhamn, 1993). Therefore it seems important to
build activities that not only refer to authentic work practices but which are also part of the
learner's field of experience (Boero & Douek, 2008).
1.2 Statistics and management
Because of its widespread use in modern society, activities involving statistical reasoning
and data can easily provide students with problems inspired by everyday life or professional
settings. In business schools, statistics is an important subject, as it offers much insight into
many serious corporate questions and issues. But, in fact, most decisions can be made
without considering any statistical methods and, quite often, managers are not aware of the
types of rationality underlying the decisions they make, or of the way they could improve
their decision-making process by using statistical methods (Dassonville & Hahn, 2002). In
sales management, statistics offers the possibility of analysing and modelling information
with very large data sets held by firms about their customers.
Statistics educators recommend using real data and developing an EDA approach in
order to enculturate students into statistical reasoning (Gould, 2010; Pfannkuch, 2005).
The aim is to give students the opportunity to mine through data, to formulate hypotheses
out of the information given and to choose appropriate tools to verify these hypotheses. In
particular, students are driven to work on notions such as variation and distribution, two
foundation stones of statistics (Wild, 2006).
Nevertheless, if variation and distributions are key statistical concepts, they are hard to
deal with at any age or level (Garfield & Ben-Zvi, 2005). Research studies show that
students usually study extremes and divide data into subgroups (Hammerman & Rubin,
2004), they have difficulty with spontaneous use of summary statistics (Konold &
Pollatsek, 2002) and, when they calculate measures, they do not use common sense in
solving the problems (Bakker, 2004). Authors stress the importance of dealing with the two
forms of variability, within-group and between-groups (Makar & Confrey, 2005; Garfield &

242

C. Hahn

Ben-Zvi, 2005). They show that moving from a local (data seen as representing a collection
of individuals) to a global point of view (data seen as a whole), and therefore constructing
the concept of distribution, is a difficult task (Makar & Confrey, 2005).
My aim was to explore how students link academic knowledge with workplace
experience. The tested hypothesis was that through a carefully designed learning activity, a
teacher could gain some insight into this process of problem shaping at the interplay of
work and school. This hypothesis can be divided into three sub-hypotheses as described in
some details below.

2 Methodology
2.1 The pedagogical device
The first part of my theoretical framework led to the design of an activity centred on a
situation that should make sense at three levels: At the learner's level, this situation must be
related to her/his field of experience; at the discipline's level, it must focus on fundamental
concepts; and at the workplace level as it must be authenticbased on information
collected in the field.
In order to support the dialectical learning process, I assumed that the activity had to
involve intermediary phases related to school practices or to work practice as well as a final
phase of decision making during which students would connect knowledge from both
worlds. Because students must confront their conceptions, I also wanted the activity to
include discussions among students, intended to provoke such a confrontation.
Drawing on the statistics education research results quoted above, I designed a four-step
device based on a story, inspired by observations made in workplaces I had visited and by
interviews with sales managers. The story was about a firm, T, which sells office
equipment, hiring a sales manager. Students were asked to choose which of three sales areas
they would prefer to manage. They had to make their decision according to information
they were given about a group of customers (businesses) located in different regions (with
different group sizes in each region). This information, presented in an Excel file, included
a set of one categorical variable, date of first purchase; one ordinal variable, evaluation of
commercial relation (a grade from 0 to 10); and four quantitative variables: previous year's
amount of sales (of the client), distance (from the client to T location), staff (of the
client), and number of different items (sold to the client in the past year). Distributions of
variables were carefully designed in order to present specific characteristics. For example,
in the three regions, the variable sales had the same mean but different variances and
medians; in area A and B there were linear correlations between numerical variables but in
area C no correlation; in Area A outliers played an important role. Of course, none of the
three regions could be considered the absolute best.
First, each student was provided individually with the distribution of one variable from
one sales area (a different distribution for each student per class); subsequently each student
was asked to write a brief summary of the information he or she received (step 1). Next, I
formed groups of three students, with each of them having studied the same variable in a
different area, and I asked each group to summarise the information it had received by
comparing the three distributions of the same variable in the three different samples (step
2). In this way, they were able to consider two types of variability, within a group and
between groups. Then I built new groups of six students, each of them having different
information about one variable (among six) in all three sales areas (step 3). In the final

Linking academic knowledge and professional experience

243

phase, I asked the students (in groups of three, as in step 2) to make a final decision about
the area they would choose by analysing all available data simultaneously (step 4).
I assumed that steps 1 and 2 were closer to school practice, and steps 3 and 4 were closer
to professional practice, with step 3 more typical of a situation faced by a salesperson and
step 4 being a situation typically faced by a manager. Thus I expected that, consistent with
my hypothesis, students using results from steps 1 and 2 (the school part) would be led to
confront both types of knowledge at steps 3 and 4 (the professional part), and that this
would enable me to gain some insight into the way they linked statistical knowledge with
workplace experience.
More specifically, I assumed that:
(H1)
(H2)
(H3)

Students would refer more to school knowledge at steps 1 and 2 and more to
professional workplace knowledge at steps 3 and 4;
Passing from step 1 to step 2, but also from step 3 to step 4, would help students to
move from a local to a global point of view;
Step 4 would lead students to integrate both types of knowledge, as they had to
make their final decision according to what they had done at steps 1 to 3.

2.2 Experimental procedure

Since I wanted to gain insight into students' conceptions and the way they negotiated
meaning, I needed to design a qualitative procedure. My device was first tested with 36
students (15 women and 21 men, 20 to 24 years old), engaged in a 3-year masters level
programme of an average level business school that regularly includes several periods of
internship. Most of these students (n=34) completed a 2-year commerce degree prior to
entering the masters programme and had work experience, mostly as salespersons. All of
these students had a secondary education in mathematics and all had previously completed
at least a basic statistics course during their post-secondary curriculum.
Two questionnaires were given to the students at the beginning of the school year by the
teacher in charge of the business course. The first questionnaire focussed on their former
experiences and future projects, the second on their statistical knowledge: Given a list of
statistical concepts, they were asked if they had met these at school and if they knew how to
use them.
The experiment took place during the two first sessions (3 h each) of a
compulsory statistics course during the first year. I split the group into two
subgroups located in two different classrooms for space and organisational reasons.
Each subgroup followed the same procedure. At each step, the students were able to
use their personal calculator or computer. There was no intervention by the
researcher during the sessions. Two colleagues helped to manage the organisation:
They were present in the classrooms to answer questions on practical matters and to
monitor the activity.
The debates between students during steps 2, 3 and 4 were audio-taped; in addition,
the teachers and I took field notes and collected reports written by the students at each
step. Students were told that we wanted to keep track of the discussions in order to
help us to adapt the course to their needs, which I actually did after the conclusion of
the research. They were allowed to stop the recorder if they wanted, which happened
occasionally during breaks. The recordings include snippets of personal discussions
which were not to the classroom activity. I assumed that the students, eventually, forgot

C. Hahn

244

about the recorder. I transcribed all discussions between students and analysed their
content.
I first studied the use of statistics by students from their written work at each step. Some
of the findings are summarised in the first part of the results section. Then I transcribed
each of the debates between the students (steps 2, 3 and 4) and made a first coding,
according to standard methodology in qualitative analysis (Miles and Huberman, 1984). As
I assumed that discourse is shaped by and helps to shape the activity, I used a
methodological framework based on a sociocultural type of discourse analysis which
Bernard and Ryan (2010) identify as language in use and distinguish from the linguistic
type grammar in use and the critical type.
Given my hypothesis, I focused on two themes: the reference to statistical tools and the
reference to students' personal experiences. Initially, I identified how and when students
refer to statistics tools. The results are presented in the second part of the results section.
Then I searched for simultaneous occurrences of these two themes and selected all the
elements of dialogue where I had found one of these occurences. I analysed these transcript
excerpts and made conjectures about patterns. These conjectures led me to propose an
interpretative framework for the way students linked their experience to both the problem
they had to deal with and to statistics. I present below a synthesis of the main findings,
illustrated by typical segments of the transcripts selected through pile sort method (Bernard
& Ryan, 2010).

3 Results
3.1 The use of statistical tools in the written reports
I describe in this section of the article results concerning the ordinal variable and the four
quantitative variables (30 students studied these variables, six students per variable at first
step). I focus on the use of the mean, median and standard deviation because there were
very few occurrences of the use of other tools, such as graphs.
Table 1 compares answers to the questionnaire (what students claim to know) and
content of the reports at step 1, for 30 students out of the total of 36 (the six remaining
students dealt with the qualitative variable). It seems that students were accurate in their self
ratingalthough they also seem to underestimate their capacity to calculate a mean and a
median.
Although very few students calculated or used measures of variability, many of them
expressed an intuitive conception of variation, as evidenced by their references to the shape
of the distribution. As I had expected, as it is a natural process (Hammerman & Rubin,
Table 1 Comparison between answers to questionnaire and answers at step 1
Questionnaire

Step1
Calculated
(without mistake)

Calculated
(wrongly)

Taught in
school

Met out-ofschool

Know how
to calculate

Know how
to get the
result from
spreadsheet

Know how
to use it
out-of-school

Mean

30

16

16

20

18

24

Median

18

10

Standard
deviation

24

245

Linking academic knowledge and professional experience

2004), many students divided the data into subgroups. Nevertheless, I found two different
types of strategies. At this stage, 19 students out of 30 built subgroups based on the
distribution (use of mean or median, or discontinuities in the data set) and 10 built
subgroups referring to a social norm: the decimal system (hundreds), economic typology
(size of firms), or a school norm (a good grade must be 5 or above). So the observations I
made at step 1 are consistent with the results from the literature review, although the
literature refers mostly to younger students.
I had predicted that the students would refer more to school knowledge at steps 1 and 2
than at steps 3 and 4 (H1). Indeed, at step 1, many students tried to apply statistical
knowledge learned at school and calculated as many summary statistics as they could; 11
without any mention of the task context, even to recall the name of the variable.
Nevertheless, 12 of them already integrated elements of their personal experience of the
situation context at this stage. Strategies seemed to depend on the task context (Wedege,
1999) and not only on the distribution of numbers: Similar strategies were used for the
same variable (e.g., all students who dealt with sales and distance calculated percentages for
subgroups). I mostly found references to the situation context for sales and distance (most
important for a salesperson, according to our interviews with professionals).
At step 3, when groups of six students had to draw a conclusion about one area from
their individual study of each of the variables, I noticed in the reports that the use of
measures of variability was less frequent and, as in step 2, dependent on the task context
(see Table 2). They indicated standard deviation for only two variables, staff and items.
Those who did not relate their work to their personal experience in the workplace calculated
standard deviation for variables where it made no sense for them to consider the context.
One group went back to a local strategy by numbering customers.
At step 4, when groups of three were supposed to decide on the area they would like to
manage, I found almost no occurrence of the use of measures of centre or variability: Only
two groups (out of ten) used the average for distance and grade in their written
argumentation. Their reasoning was based on commercial arguments and mostly built on
comparison of percentages within subgroups.
I assumed (H2) that steps 2 and 4 would help students to move from a local to a global
conceptionin particular by using multiplicative strategies (as sample sizes were different).
That was obvious in the reports made in step 2: Each student who had previously made lists
or rankings of customers abandoned them. This seems to indicate a shift towards a global
point of view, although they used few summary statistics. While at step 3 there is a return to
the study of individuals one by one, at step 4 reports indicate a shift back to a global point
of view: Students did not focus on particular firms, and used expressions like in general
or globally.

Table 2 Use of summary statistics at step 3 (ten Groups)

Sales

Staff

Items

Distance

Grade

Mean

Median

Standard deviation

Use of effective commercial context

246

C. Hahn

3.2 The reference to statistics in the discussions

The written report is the result of the debates between students, and only provides a
restricted picture of the richness of these discussions. For example, the recordings showed
that, during step 3, students mentioned the standard deviation several times, although this
did not appear in the reports. In the following extract (step 3, group 3),1 two students tried
to explain to their group how standard deviation was calculated. The ultimate lack of
application of standard deviation in the reports suggests that these students failed to
convince the others of its relevance to the problem.
S4 Standard deviation it is with average, how much most of the firms deviate
S6 Yes it is variations. You see for example, here [he shows his paper], there are a lot of
numbers, so average is here Not here because it is very, very small but as there are
some that are high and this modifies average. Then standard deviation is high because
there are values that are very far from the others. When it is small, this means that all
values are close. For example if average is 10 and you have only tens we will say that
standard deviation is 0.
To calculate an average is an easy task, but interpreting the result according to the
situation context is not so straightforward, as it requires adoption of a global point of view.
This can be discerned from the following extract (step 3, group 3):
S5
S4
S6
S5
S6
S5
S6
S5
S4
S5
S4
S5

7 is a good grade!
Yes but in general we have good grades as the worst is 4.
The average is 6.76.
But I think that 78 is a good grade.
You have to compare to the average. If, for example everybody has between 16 and
20, then average is 18.
And then you will say that you got a bad mark?
Compared to the average. For example if you got a 16.3, compared to the average
Even compared to the average it is still a good mark.
The regular average is 5. We got 6.76.
But you decide you got a good mark if it is above average? In the example she gave, if
I have 16 and if it is the worst mark I will still say I got a good mark.
But listen you talk about a school test, we are talking about a firm.
But it is the same. Whenever you talk about school or grade given to a firm, it is the same.

S5 struggled with the interpretation of the mean. Although she identified the concept
across situations, she did not take into account the distribution of values. She drew an
individual, local analysis, based on her experience as a student when S6 positioned the
value comparatively to the whole set of values. S4 used a more intuitive strategy: she
compared the value they had found (7) to an extreme (the minimum, 4), and then compared
the average to the anchor value (Tversky & Kahneman, 1974) 5.
In most of the cases, step 3 led students to formulate a hypothesis about the relationship
between two variables. They looked for potential links (or no link) from particular cases or
based on assumptions growing out of their experience, as seen in this extract (step 3, group 2):
1

Quotations from students' recorded discussions are numbered by the step (2, 3 or 4) and the group number
(1 to 6 for step3, 1 to 12 for steps 2 and 4).

Linking academic knowledge and professional experience

S1
S2
S3
S1
S1
S2
S1

247

If it is a small firm then the sales must be low.

Look at this one, it has high sales and a staff of only forty
You must look in general; there is always a single case
Staff does not go with distance.
We must connect everything to sales, sales is still the main criterion.
We see if it grows in proportion.
In general, we see that grades grow with sales. Distance, the same.

The assumptions formulated by students mostly reflected their lack of knowledge about
possible statistical tools. Students kept summary statistics when they were able to agree on
a common interpretation, dropping those that they could not make sense of. This explains
why they hardly used summary statistics in their written reports: We are going to stick to
this kind of knowledge, like this percentage [of customers] is satisfied, this number [of
customers] put the max score, because this kind of information is clear (step 4, group 8).
At step 4, even if the comparison of their work with what had been written by other
groups during previous steps aroused students' curiosity, they quickly abandoned their
desires to exploit it, given the complexity of the task. Most students simply characterised
areas in a simplistic manner, such as Area Adangerous, Area Brisky, Area Cmore
homogeneous (step 4, group 7).
In general, I observed that as students moved forward in the experiment they left their
statistical knowledge behind. An interpretation could be that they did not find it practical
enough for the objectives they had set themselves.
3.3 Forms of rationality
Considering the references to the situation context, sometimes even at step 1, it seems that
students very quickly built a representation of the problem as a commercial problem. This
led them to interpret data differently, as we can see in this extract of the discussion that
occured in one of the two groups dealing with grade at step 2 (group 9):
S7
S8
S7
S8
S7
S8
S7
S9
S8
S9
S8
S9
S8
S9
S7
S8
S7

You did not calculate the average for your area? For your twenty customers, how many?
I told you that there were ten [customers who gave a grade under 5] out of twenty.
Yes, but the total average?
But I told you, it is 10.
But the average grade, how much?
I told you.
You did not calculate it?
The addition of grades divided by the number of grades.
Oh this, I did not do it.
The average is 6.76 in my area.
Is this good or not?
This is not so simple the average is 6.76
But how many have a grade above 5, this I am sure you did not do it?
No, I did not.
In my area, there are thirty-one customers, the general average is 5.
Exactly 5?
Yes, there are thirteen whose business relationship is under 5, which represents 42%,
and there are eighteen whose relationship is above 5, which represents 58%. Then the
end result is positive but not good enough.

248

C. Hahn

S8 In my area, eleven customers reach average 5, so we must improve commercial

relationship and try to find out during appointments what they really need and adapt
commercial policy to improve their satisfaction.
We could claim that the three students were at different stages of understanding but it seems
to me that they are not solving the same problem. The problem is shaped by the objective they
set for themselves: S7 seems to plan a comparative study in order to understand differences
between areas, S9 is solving a school problem to answer the teacher's request, and S8 already
wants to answer the question which is the best area? at this early stage. Then, of course,
strategies differ. S7 referred to what seems to be a scientific rationality: to compare
distribution and use statistical concepts. S9's actions are based on technical rationality (Schn,
1983): He applied techniques learned at school, but did not know how he can use the result to
answer a question. S8's reasoning is pragmatic; he used a simple, intuitive strategy.
Pragmatic rationality seems to be linked to students' experiences at work while technical
rationality seems to refer to school practices. Students using intuitive strategies frequently
mention their experiences as salespersons. The recordings showed that they raised questions
about information not given in the file. For example, at step 3, while studying distance,
students wondered about qualitative factors such as type of road or the amount of traffic.
When, in one group, a student asked, What is the grade you think is good? another
student answered: 5. Between 5 and 6 it is a grade where nobody objects to you, the guy is
more sympathetic. Below 5, he is with you but if another supplier visits him then he will
leave. (step 3, group 5). The reference to the anchor value 5 implies anticipation linked to
a reference point and led students to construct a rule of action as a salesperson to achieve
the goal they had set (i.e. so keep the client).
Students who refer to technical rationality see the goal as a response to a command by the
school. Some students mentioned the teacher or people and referred to the perceived
requirements: People know what is right or wrong with a sentence like that (step 3, group 2).
The problem is primarily academic, but it is not a statistical problem, rather a business problem,
as students often talked about tools they learned in the business course: I do not remember the
formulas to calculate small ratios, to give numbers (step 3, group 5). The aim when they looked
for links between the variables was primarily to verify relations learned at school, that is, to find
the answer hidden in the data by the teacher.
At step 4, students had to compare the three areas and decide which one they wanted to
manage. This was not an easy task as there was, of course, no single right answer. I
expected (H3) that students would use knowledge from different originsthe statistics and
business course, their personal experienceand articulate it. However, I observed that, at
this step, pragmatic rationality mostly prevails. Nevertheless, some students tried to make
sense of statistics as in the following extract (step 4, group10):
S11

The issue is that you're the sales manager and you must choose the area you want to
develop. They let you choose what is most important to select an area.
S10 It depends of the salary you want at the beginning! []
S11 (to S12) What are you looking for?
S12 Averages.
S11 There are about the same. [average sales were almost the same in the three areas]
S12 So the argument [for the existence] of a leader is irrelevant because we do not have the
same number of customers. What I am saying is that at first you see that the sales in Area
C are huge compared to the sales in Area A, but in fact area A has fewer companies.
Presumably if it had the same number of customers it would have had the same sales.

Linking academic knowledge and professional experience

249

S11

That is it, because area C is already well developed At the same time we are not
sure that firms in area A would ask us to equip their offices
S12 I am wondering
S10 In fact, you do not really want to work in a firm!
The debate between S11 and S12 addresses potential development areas. S12 focussed
on the size of the samples. He not only pointed out that they are different, as did many
students, but decided that the area with more companies and the highest amount of sales
must be the best one. His thinking led him to exploit the concept of mean in a very
meaningful way: if the areas had the same average sales then it should be possible to
develop the smallest area. The concept of mean is linked here with the concept of business
development. In contrast, S10 positioned himself at a different level, as an operational
person who does not ask too many questions, except about his salary.
It seems that S12 articulated two conceptual fields (Vergnaud, 1990) that is, two spaces
of problems, trade and statistics, involving, for each of them, a set of related concepts, and
this led him to build a more managerial approach to the problem. He seems to question and
to link knowledge of different origins by emancipating himself from the roles and identities
that he had previously constructed. But his questioning was stopped by S10, who was
driven by a more pragmatic purpose. I observed this phenomenon in other groups during
step 4.

4 Conclusion
As apprentices in a masters level business school programme, the 36 students in this study
belong simultaneously to the two different worlds of school and workplace. In order to get
some insight into their learning processes, I implemented a pedagogical device in an
introductory statistics course. This four-step device, based on an EDA approach, placed
students in a school-type situation, followed by a workplace-type situation, and focussed on
the well-documented learning obstacles of variation and distribution.
The results seem to confirm the hypothesis that the device would facilitate the
confrontation of knowledge of different origins through the use of an authentic situation
context, and linked to students' personal experiences as salespersons. Very early in the
experiment, even sooner than I expected, I found occurrences of students referring to
personal experiences of the workplace. This phenomenon apparently parallels the
disappearance of the use of statistics in the workplace itself (Dassonville & Hahn, 2002).
I claimed that different knowledge confronted by students was associated with what I
suggested to be different forms of rationality: technical (the application of techniques which
are not put into perspective), pragmatic (the use of intuitive strategies to meet a limited
short-term objective) and scientific (the integration of theories to enlighten the problem).
These forms of rationality led students to construct and answer different problems. I found
few occurrences of what is usually called scientific rationality, the kind of rationality to
which teachers typically refer. As students progressed through the activity, pragmatic
rationality, tied to their experience as salespersons, prevailed. This form of rationality did
not prevent students from asking questions, but they worked most of the time without
reference to statistical knowledge. In drawing upon statistical knowledge, students were
usually trying to meet what they felt to be the teacher's intention. Thus, their actions often
made no sense regarding the actual goal of the activity (i.e. to choose the best area). These
students quickly abandoned what I called technical rationality to adopt a pragmatic point of

250

C. Hahn

view and addressed the activity from the perspective of salespersons. This potential effect is
inherent in the use of so-called authentic situations at school, something of which teachers
should be aware.
Students tried to compare areas by articulating their workplace experience with statistical
knowledge but they usually could not go very far due to a lack of mastery of statistical
tools. The capacity to make sense of statistics seemed to be linked to more managerial
behaviour. In particular, the difficulty in moving from a local to a global point of view
reflected the difficulty of shifting identity from a salesperson to that of a sales manager; a
salesperson deals with his/her customers more individually than a manager, whose role
implies the need to mobilise more statistical knowledge. As Cobb and Hodge (2002) claim,
an understanding of statistics and personal identity seem to be linked. As cognitive aspects
are linked to social identity, the resistance in using some specific knowledge can be
explained by the fact that some identities are less valued than others (Abreu, 2000). Indeed,
if I look at the results of the experiment, it seems that, for the students I worked with, the
identity of salesperson is much more valued than the identity of student. The challenge is to
make them understand that both identities must converge if they are to gain access to the
identity of manager.
This question of identity goes far beyond the fields of vocational education: The identity
of a student is not as obvious nor clearly defined as in the past, and, considering the
importance of mathematics in the selection process in most countries, identity and
perceived mathematical abilities are strongly implicated in one anotherfor masters level
business studies students at least.

References
Abreu, G. de (2000). Relationships between macro and micro socio-cultural contexts: Implications for the
study of interactions in the mathematics classroom. Educational Studies in Mathematics, 41, 129.
Bachelard, G. (1970). La formation de l'esprit scientifique [The formation of the scientific mind]. Paris: Vrin.
Bakker, A. (2004). Reasoning about shape as a pattern in variability. Statistics Education Research Journal,
3(2), 6483.
Bernard, H. R., & Ryan, G. W. (2010). Analyzing qualitative data, systematic approaches. Los Angeles:
Sage.
Bessot, A., & Ridgway, J. (Eds.). (2000). Education for mathematics in the workplace. Dordrecht: Kluwer
Academic Publishers.
Boero, P., & Douek, N. (2008). La didactique des domaines d'exprience [Didactics of domains of
experience]. Carrefour de l'Education, 26, 99114.
Brossard, M. (2008). Concepts quotidiens/concepts scientifiques: Rflexions sur une hypothse de travail
[Everyday concepts and scientific concepts: Reflection on a working hypothesis]. Carrefours de
l'Education, 26, 6782.
Cobb, P., & Hodge, L. (2002). Learning, identity and statistical date analysis. In B. Phillips (Ed.),
Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference of Teaching Statistics. Voorburg, the Netherlands:
International Statistical Institute. Retrieved from http://www.stat.auckland.ac.nz/~iase/publications/1/
2e1_cobb.pdf.
Cobb, P., Confrey, J., diSessa, A., Lehrer, R., & Schauble, L. (2003). Design experiment in educational
research. Educational Researcher, 32(1), 913.
Dassonville, P., & Hahn, C. (2002). Statistics education for future managers: Needs obstacles and possible
solutions. In B. Phillips (Ed.), Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference of Teaching Statistics.
Voorburg, the Netherlands: International Statistical Institute. Retrieved from http://www.stat.auckland.ac.
nz/~iase/publications/1/4h2_hahn.pdf.
Freudenthal, H. (1991). Revisiting mathematics education. Dordrecht: Reidel.
Garfield, J., & Ben-Zvi, D. (2005). A framework for teaching and assessing reasoning about variability.
Statistics Education Research Journal, 4(1), 9299.

Linking academic knowledge and professional experience

251

Gould, R. (2010). Statistics and the modern student. International Statistical Review, 78(2), 297315.
Hahn, C. (2000). Teaching mathematics to shop-assistant apprentices: Exploring content and didactical
situations. In A. Bessot & J. Ridgway (Eds.), Education for mathematics in the workplace (pp. 159166).
Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Hammerman, J., & Rubin, A. (2004). Strategies for managing statistical complexity with new software tools.
Statistics Education Research Journal, 3(2), 1741.
Hoyles, C., Noss, R., Kent, P., & Bakker, A. (2010). Improving mathematics at work: The need for technomathematical literacies. London: Routledge.
Konold, C., & Pollatsek, A. (2002). Data analysis as the search for signal in noisy process. Journal for
Research in Mathematics Education, 33, 259289.
Lave, J. (1988). Cognition in practice: Mind, mathematics and culture in every day life. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Makar, K., & Confrey, J. (2005). Variation-talk: Articulating meanings in statistics. Statistics Education
Research Journal, 4(1), 2754.
Miles, M., & Huberman, M. A. (1984). Qualitative data analysis. Berveley Hills: Sage Publications.
Noss, R., Hoyles, C., & Pozzi, S. (2000). Working knowledge: Mathematics in use. In A. Bessot & J.
Ridgway (Eds.), Education for mathematics in the workplace (pp. 1735). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic
Publishers.
Nunes, T., Schliemann, A., & Carraher, D. (1993). Street mathematics and school mathematics. New York:
Cambridge University Press.
Pastr, P. (2007). Champs conceptuels et champs professionnels [Conceptual fields and professional fields].
In M. Merri (Ed.), Activit humaine et conceptualisation [Human activity and conceptualisation]
(pp. 7986). Toulouse: Presses universitaires du Mirail.
Pastr, P., Vergnaud, G., & Mayen, P. (2006). La didactique professionnelle [Professional didactics]. Revue
Franaise de Pdagogie, 154, 145198.
Pfannkuch, M. (2005). Thinking tools and variation. Statistics Education Research Journal, 4(1), 8391.
Polanyi, M. (1966). The tacit dimension. NY: Doubleday.
Slj, R., & Wyndhamn, J. (1993). Solving everyday problems in the formal setting. An empirical study of
the school as context for thought. In S. Chaiklin & J. Lave (Eds.), Understanding practice: Perspectives
on activity and context (pp. 327342). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Schn, D. A. (1983). The reflexive practitioner. New York: Basic Books.
Simon, H. A. (1991). Bounded rationality and organizational learning. Organization Science, 21, 125134.
Star, S. L., & Griesemer, J. R. (1989). Institutional ecology, translations and boundary objects: Amateurs
and professionals in Berkeley's museum of vertebrate zoology. Social Studies of Science, 19, 387420.
Steen, L., & Forman, S. (2000). Making authentic mathematics work for all students. In A. Bessot & J.
Ridgway (Eds.), Education for mathematics in the workplace (pp. 115126). Dordrecht: Kluwer
Academic Publishers.
Triantafillou, C., & Potari, D. (2010). Mathematical practices in a technological workplace: The role of tools.
Educational Studies in Mathematics, 74, 275294.
Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1974). Judgement under uncertainty, heuristics and biases. Sciences, 185,
11241130.
Vergnaud, G. (1990). La thorie des champs conceptuels [The theory of conceptual fields]. Recherches en
Didactique des Mathmatiques, 10(2-3), 133170.
Wedege, T. (1999). To knowor not to knowmathematics, that is the question of context. Educational
Studies in Mathematics, 39, 205227.
Wild, C. (2006). The concept of distribution. Statistics Education Research Journal, 5(2), 1024.