Before students are introduced to formal statistical inference procedures at Grade 12, it is necessary in the earlier years to start building concepts such as sample, population, sampling variability, and "making a call". This paper reports on an initial study to determine whether proposed ideas about improving students' inferential reasoning were possible in practice in terms of student capability. Interviews, assessment responses, and classroom experiences will be used to describe how three low-to-average ability Grade 11 students started to conceptualize that inferences about populations can be made from samples. The findings suggest that the proposed instruction methods, which focus on building concepts about sampling variability, can influence and develop students' inferential reasoning. Issues arising from the study are discussed.
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