The Influence of Statistical Knowledge for Teaching Theory on the Development of a Statistics Course for Pre-K-8 Teachers

• Activity Number: 277
• Type: Invited
• Date/Time: Tuesday, August 6, 2013 : 8:30 AM to 10:20 AM
• Sponsor: Section on Statistical Education
• Author(s): Randall Edgar Groth*+
• Companies: Salisbury University
• Keywords: teacher education ; statistical knowledge for teaching ; elementary school ; middle school

Abstract

Prospective teachers are unique among undergraduates. Not only must they develop statistical knowledge for themselves - they must also develop knowledge of how to help children do so. This unique need led the author and his colleagues to develop a special course for prospective PreK-8 teachers to replace the conventional introductory statistics course they had taken in the past. The course was grounded in the theoretical premise that teachers need both subject matter knowledge (i.e., knowledge of introductory statistics) and pedagogical content knowledge (i.e., knowledge of how to make statistics understandable to others). The nature of the course will be described in terms of how its development was influenced by theories of subject matter knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge. Assessment results from administrations of the course will be presented. Additionally, theoretical tools to investigate statistical knowledge for teaching that were constructed by analyzing empirical data from the course will be discussed. These assessment tools allow for the investigation of statistical knowledge for teaching in regard to specific concepts embedded in PreK-8 curricula.