This paper is from Session 8F: Research on professional development of teachers in statistics

which comes under Topic 8: Research in statistics education

Learning and teaching statistical investigations: a case study of a prospective teacher

Presenter

• Raquel Santos (Higher School of Education of Santarém, Portugal)

Co-author

• João Pedro da Ponte (University of Lisbon, Portugal)

Abstract

More than a collection of tools to deal with problems, statistics provides a comprehensive framework to think about the world. One way of using it is doing statistical investigations (SI). In this communication, we present a case study of a prospective primary school teacher regarding her perspective on teaching and learning SI. To do so, we analyze her written report of a SI, a questionnaire, observation of a SI she carried out in a grade 3 class, and interviews. Results show that this prospective teacher has difficulty in planning a SI for her students, mainly because she sees this activity as a sequence of techniques to be applied. This suggests that in teacher education programs, the analysis of what is involved in teaching statistical concepts through SI must receive specific attention, instead of using SI only as a context to apply concepts and work with data.