Prospective Primary School Teachers’ Perception of Randomness

Research on Teaching and Learning Probability

“…These theories, frameworks, and models were developed during research that investigated a variety of topics in probability, which included (difficulties associated with): randomness (e.g., Batanero et al 2014;Batanero and Serrano 1999;Falk and Konold 1997;Pratt 2000), sample space (Jones et al 1997(Jones et al , 1999Nunes et al 2014), and probabilistic reasoning (Fischbein et al 1991;Fischbein and Schnarch 1997;Lecoutre 1992;Konold et al 1993). Worthy of note, the term misconception, which acted as the de facto terminology for a number of years, has more recently evolved to preconceptions and other variants, which are perhaps better aligned with other theories in the field of mathematics education.…”

“…Research in this area is scarce and is mostly focussed on the evaluation of prospective teachers' knowledge of probability (e.g., Batanero et al 2014;Chernoff and Russel 2012). While there is still need for further research into prospective and practising teacher probability knowledge, two important missing areas of research in probability education are the analysis of the components of teachers' knowledge and the design of adequate materials and effective activities for educating teachers.…”

“…The education of primary school teachers is even more challenging, because few of them have had suitable training in either theoretical or applied probability (Franklin and Mewborn 2006). Moreover, recent research suggests that many prospective teachers share with their students common biases in probabilistic reasoning (e.g., Batanero et al 2014;Prodromou 2012) A second component is the pedagogical knowledge needed to teach probability, where general principles valid for other areas of mathematics are not always appropriate (Batanero et al 2004). For example, in arithmetic or geometry, elementary operations can be reversed, and this reversibility can be represented by concrete materials, which serve to organise experiences where children progressively abstract the structure behind the concrete situation.…”

New Zealand teachers' generation problem misconceptions

“…Random phenomena can be evidenced globally and its occurrences are considered, not only in statistics, but within numerous fields [2,10,11,15] and in everyday society [4,5]. Despite the frequency in which random phenomena are experienced, humans in general have a poor understanding of randomness [5], often holding misconceptions [22]. When exploring randomness misconceptions, researchers have identified underlying thinking influenced by the representativeness heuristic, whereby participants expect even short run sequences to reflect long run characteristics [22].…”

Prospective Primary School Teachers’ Attitudes towards Probability and its Teaching

“…However, many teachers, in particular primary school teachers, have only studied theoretical probability and lack experience in designing investigations or simulations in the classroom context (Kvatinsky & Even, 2002;Stohl, 2005). Moreover, recent research suggests that many prospective teachers hold the same biases about probabilistic reasoning as their students (Batanero et al, 2014;Liu & Thompson, 2007).…”