PROCEEDINGS OF THE 16TH ANNUAL CONFERENCE ON RESEARCH IN UNDERGRADUATE MATHEMATICS EDUCATION (Vol 2)
2013
Denver, Colorado
Pre-service secondary mathematics teachers’ statistical preparation: Interpreting the news
Page: 2-447
Undergraduate mathematics programs must prepare teachers for the challenges of teaching statistical thinking as advocated in standards documents and statistics education literature. This preliminary report presents initial results from a study of pre-service secondary mathematics teachers at the end of their undergraduate educations. Although nearly all had completed a required upper-division statistics course, most were challenged by two tasks which required a critical analysis of the use of statistics in newspaper articles. Some patterns emerged in the incorrect answers, including a tendency to focus on potential sampling issues which were not relevant to the tasks. The session will explore the nature and sources of these difficulties with statistical thinking and statistical communication and it will explore the implications for undergraduate mathematics and statistics teacher preparation.