Welcome to the IASE Statistical Education Research Group. This group was first started informally at ICOTS I on the suggestions by Ramesh Kapadia, Anne Hawkins, Ephraim Fischbein, David Green, Leonart Rade, Hans Bentz, Ruma Falk, Michael Shaughnessy and Mandfred Borovnick. Since 1982 to 1999 we have been working with the name International Study Group for Research on Learning Probability and Statistics. David Green, Joan Garfield and Carmen Batanero were secretary of the group in 1982-87; 1988-95 and 1996-99.

Since January 2000, we have changed to the IASE Statistical Education Research Group, a special interest group within the IASE (International Association for Statistical Education), which it is also opened to all who share our common interest in carrying out research into the teaching and learning of statistics and probability. The IASE is at present the main international association devoted to improve and extend statistical education through the world at all educational levels. It encourages a variety of different activities, including research, as IASE recognises the relevance of research in extending our knowledge, in advancing the academic recognition of a discipline, as well as in improving the practice of education.

The aims of the IASE Statistical Education Research Group can be summarised in following points:

1. Exchanging information between members;
2. Encouraging research activity and collaborative projects by members;
3. Developing assessment instruments in the field of statistics education;
4. Advancing our knowledge about student's attitudes, conceptions, and difficulties as regards stochastical knowledge;
5. Improving the teaching and interpretation of statistics at all educational levels
6. Getting academic recognition for statistical education research.

Members of the Research Group meet at the International Conferences on Teaching Statistics, held every four years and at other ISI and IASE Conferences. In addition there is an increasing group presence in PME and PME_NA (Psychology of Mathematics Education), ICME (International Conferences on Mathematics education), AERA meetings, and other national and international conferences.

There have been contacts among the group members to carry out research projects or to collaborate in the writing of international books. Other activities included organising conferences, reporting research results in journals, doing or supervising dissertations, editing journals or preparing Internet resources for teaching statistics.

A newsletter is edited every four months to serve as a link between members and to provide information useful to research. This newsletter continues the previous Newsletter of the International Study Group for Research in Learning Probability and Statistics and is available from the web at (http://www.ugr.es/local/batanero/).

The Newsletter contains short research papers, summaries of research papers, books and recent dissertations, information about members, summaries of recent dissertations, information concerning recent and forthcoming conferences, and Internet resources of interest to researchers. Information to be published in the Newsletter should be sent to one of the Editors:

Carmen Batanero, Facultad de Ciencias de la Educación, Universidad de Granada, 18071 Granada, Spain, <batanero@ugr.es>

M.G. Ottaviani. Dipartimento di Statistica Probabilita e Statitstica Applicata, Universit· degli Studi di Roma "La Sapienza", Italy, <ottavian@pow2.sta.uniroma1.it>

John Truran, Mathematics Education, Graduate School of Education, University of Adelaide, <jtruran@arts.adelaide.edu.au>