RUME 28
2026
Alexandria, Virginia
Addressing the Need for an Undergraduate Statistics Teaching Observation Protocol
Page: 1275
To address growing concerns in teacher preparedness and competence, researchers have shifted from Mathematical Knowledge for Teaching (MKT) (Ball et al., 2008) to Statistical Knowledge for Teaching (SKT) (Groth, 2013), since statistics requires its own specialized skillset. As such, there is a need to consider frameworks that utilize statistics specific knowledge when addressing teacher capabilities in a statistics unit or classroom. Studies have supported that pedagogical content knowledge for statistics, combined with subject matter knowledge is associated with student learning outcomes (Callingham et al., 2016). The main research question is: How can we observe SKT in real time in mathematics classrooms? Answering this question can explore the specific practices teachers employ during instruction. These practices differentiate the knowledge needed to teach mathematics from those needed to teach statistics. The goal of the project would be to develop an observational protocol embedded with an SKT theory to help teachers improve their teaching of statistics. One way to do this may be to observe how teachers operate in a routine day to see how they transition through various practices, and then assess their degree of attainment of various skills.