This paper is from Session 2F: Perspectives on statistics education with a focus in primary schools
which comes under Topic 2: Statistics education at the school level
Paper 2F3 (Monday 9th, 16:00-17:30)
Informal Statistical Inference and Pre-service Primary School Teachers: The Development of Content Knowledge in Teacher College Education
Presenter
- Arjen de Vetten (Universiteit Leiden, The Netherlands)
Co-authors
- Bert Van Oers (Vrije Universiteit, The Netherlands)
- Judith Schoonenboom (University of Vienna, Austria)
- Ronald Keijzer (Hogeschool iPabo, The Netherlands)
Abstract
Teachers who engage primary school students in informal statistical inference (ISI) must themselves have good content knowledge of ISI (ISI-CK). We used a case study to investigate ISI-CK development in a class of 21 pre-service primary school teachers who participated in a short intervention. Based on analyses of pre-test, post-test and intervention data, the results suggest that most participants acknowledged the possibility of making uncertain inferences. An assignment to search the media for inferential claims seemed to create awareness regarding inference. A simulation probably increased the participants’ knowledge of sampling variability and random sampling, but many participants favored distributed sampling over random sampling. Further research on belief formation with regard to data as evidence, sampling methods and the expression of uncertainty is needed.