Staticical preparation of teachers: preservice elementary teachers (PSTs) conceptions of distributions of data – thinking about measure of center and variability

Abstract

Prior research investigating PSTs’ statistical thinking is sparse, yet teacher educators need to know how best to prepare future teachers for their work and given the increasing importance of STEM education we need teachers who are capable of preparing students at an early age to think about data. In this paper we share the results from a study investigating pre-service teachers’ (PSTs’) initial thinking about distributions of data in four different contexts. In particular we investigated how PSTs reasoned about different distributions of data - including how they consider measures of center and measures of variability. Data was collected through surveys and interviews conducted prior to their beginning a statistical unit in their elementary teachers mathematics content course.