Abstract:

The paper analyses in an exemplary way how informal and formal aspects of the concept of chance are negotiated in classroom interaction. An important theoretical perspective is the relation between theory and practice in probability for getting a deeper insight in the development of the concept of stochastic randomness starting from the informal concept of chance. Two short teaching episodes dealing with games of chance in mathematics teaching are analyzed, illustrating what kind of context for the chance concept is constituted in everyday teaching. During official classroom communication, chance is mainly used as a reduced and methodically generalized notion, despite some students' critical remarks allowing for a theoretical development of this concept.