The article presents the results of theoretical analysis of formation of statistical reasoning as a major goal of teaching statistics. The authors interpreted the theory of fundamental situations by G. Brousseau to describe the nature of statistical reasoning and essential concepts of statistics mastered in the course of its acquisition. The authors defined a number of crucial factors that should be taken into account in teaching of statistics, such as sociocultural position of students towards statistics, category of student and status of statistics as school/university discipline.