Teaching a CATALST Course for Pre-Service Elementary Teachers

• Activity Number: 293
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Tuesday, July 31, 2012 : 8:30 AM to 10:20 AM
• Sponsor: Section on Statistical Education
• Author(s): Erin Blankenship*+ and Jennifer L Green
• Companies: University of Nebraska and University of Nebraska
• Keywords: Pre-service teachers ; Elementary education ; CATALST ; Introductory statistics ; Teacher education

Abstract

Introductory statistics instruction is evolving to help create a statistically literate society. However, sound statistical reasoning skills are not obtained in one general education statistics course, but instead need to be nurtured and developed over the course of one's entire K-16 educational experience (Franklin & Kader, 2010). It is therefore imperative that elementary teachers be adequately prepared to foster statistical thinking in their students. While introductory statistics courses typically serve the need to create statistically literate citizens, they do not necessarily provide the opportunity to develop pedagogical content knowledge that goes beyond a basic understanding of the content teachers will be teaching. We recently developed an introductory statistics course for pre-service elementary teachers, implementing the CATALST curriculum. The curriculum, focusing on modeling and simulation, coupled with additional activities, helped the students gain a deeper understanding of statistical concepts as well as transfer those ideas to their future elementary classrooms. This talk will describe the course and how the CATALST curriculum was modified for this audience.