This paper is from Session 2D: Statistical education at the Secondary/Higher Education interface

which comes under Topic 2: Statistics education at school level

Preparing future teachers to teach statistics

Presenter

• Gail Burrill (Michigan State University, United States)

Abstract

As statistics and data analysis become increasingly important so does the need to prepare teachers to teach these topics. The paper addresses three aspects related to this work with prospective teachers. First, a theoretical framework related to fundamental statistical ideas in the school curriculum (Burrill & Biehler, 2011) might provide guidance for the preparation of teachers across the grade levels. Second is a description of a course for prospective elementary teachers at a large university, which is designed to introduce key statistical concepts using real data and relevant contexts. Third is a brief discussion of the preparation of prospective mathematics teachers at the secondary level and how the statistics courses they take prepare them, or not, to teach statistical content and reasoning processes, particularly the content suggested in the U.S. Common Core State Standards, which have a strong emphasis on informal inference at the upper secondary level.