Proceedings of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education · Volume 1
Marieke Spijkstra, Filip Moons
Utrecht University
⬇ Download PDFProbability literacy is a vital skill for vocational students, yet it remains a neglected area in research, despite its relevance to real-world decision-making. While probability education is standard in pre-university tracks, vocational students, who make up 50% of Dutch secondary education, receive little formal instruction, leaving them vulnerable to risky behaviours like gambling. This study aims to explore how vocational students reason about probability and risk, and how emotions and heuristics influence their decisions. Using a questionnaire with six risk-literacy items, we surveyed 355 students (ages 13–15) and found that many declined games with positive expected values, often due to fear of losing or aversion to gambling. The qualitative explanations revealed that emotional and intuitive reasoning frequently overrode analytical thinking, even in low-stakes scenarios. These findings highlight the need to address cognitive and affective biases in probability education for vocational students.
probability literacyrisk literacyvocational education