Teaching statistics at the primary level: identifying obstacles and challenges in teacher preparation from looking at teaching

Abstract

Preparing preservice primary teachers to teach statistics is a complex endeavor. The challenge is to enrich content knowledge, advance pedagogical understandings, and develop the types of thinking and dispositions necessary to support instruction. This paper reports on two studies of 51 final year preservice primary teachers engaged in ‘lesson study’. Working with preservice teachers provided unique insights into the types of understandings they draw on and the difficulties they encounter when teaching and reflecting on design lessons. The study revealed that for participants the teaching of statistics is perceived as straightforward, content knowledge understandings tend to be weak and limited to procedures, and experiences of investigation is limited. Experiences planning lessons and teaching in classrooms, however, present opportunities for the development of content understandings and for developing sophisticated perspectives on data.