Teaching Statistics in School Mathematics-Challenges for Teaching and Teacher Education
In recent years, there have been an expansion and renewal of the statistics content in the mathematics curricula in many countries through all school grade levels from primary to secondary levels. However, no similar attention has been paid to the prepara
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Fundamentals for Teaching Statistics Chris Reading
Statistics is becoming increasingly important to all levels of citizenry, with more and more data available to inform decision-making. How this data is utilised by those forming the decisions and those acting on the decisions is necessarily impacted by the statistical learning experiences made available. The variety of experiences in the teaching of statistics in countries across the world outlined in Part I shows that the importance of such teaching is being recognised. Align this importance with the changing focus in statistics from computation to inference and a reconceptualisation of the teaching of statistics becomes necessary. This reconceptualisation must include not just changes to teaching methods but changes to the fundamentals for teaching statistics. Conversations in the preparation for the Joint Study are reflected in the discussion document that shared questions to frame the study. These questions addressed current problems in the teaching of statistics within school mathematics specificities such as teacher attitudes, current practices, empowering teachers, training teachers and building collaborations. The proposed research questions, organised into Joint Study Topics, provided a landscape for researchers to address in their conference presentations. As well as the planned topics that were addressed, what eventuated in these presentations was common underlying themes in relation to fundamentals that were seen to be impacting generally on statistics education and thus specifically on the teachers, teaching and teacher education. Some of these fundamentals, including technology, project work and assessment were the focus of specific Joint Study Topics but other fundamentals were not obvious in the Joint Study Conference programme. These fundamentals have been brought together in the chapters in Part II. The ideas presented in Part II in relation to these fundamentals are relevant to all those involved in statistics education but have the potential to have most impact on the work of those developing curriculum, planning teaching or training teachers.
C. Reading () SIMERR National Centre, University of New England, Education Building, Armidale, NSW 2351, Australia e-mail: [email protected]
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C. Reading
Authors in this part propose certain fundamentals that impact on the way that statistics is approached: appreciating the different perspectives on statistics that can be taken as a foundation for teaching statistics (Chap. 10); strengthening the role that probability plays in the statistics curricula (Chap. 11); and recognising the differences between mathematical thinking and statistical thinking (Chap. 15). Authors also give consideration to how these fundamentals can be supported during teaching: taking a modelling approach for learning statistics (Chap. 12); using technology to support new approaches to teaching statistics (Chap. 13); using a project-based approach to better support statistical thinking (Chap. 14); and revamping assessment a
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