The development of informal statistical inference content knowledge of pre-service primary school teachers during a teacher college intervention

Abstract

Teachers who engage primary school students in informal statistical inference (ISI) must themselves have good content knowledge of ISI (ISI-CK). However, little is known about how college education for pre-service teachers can contribute to the development of their ISI-CK. To address this shortcoming, we used a case study to investigate ISI-CK development in a class of 21 pre-service primary school teachers who participated in a short intervention (180 min). Based on qualitative and quantitative analyses of the pretest, posttest and intervention data, the results suggest that most participants acknowledged it is possible to make uncertain inferences. An assignment to search the media for inferential claims seemed to create awareness regarding inference and the need to distinguish between a sample and a population. A simulation involving random sampling and varied sample size probably increased the participants' knowledge of sampling variability and random sampling. No development was seen in the participants' knowledge about sufficient sample sizes. The statistical investigation conducted by the participants during a model lesson may have strengthened their awareness of ISI, but it also revealed that many participants continued to favour distributed sampling over random sampling. Further research on belief formation with regard to data as evidence, sampling methods and the expression of uncertainty in the context of ISI is needed.Educ Stud Math (2018) 99:217-234 https://doi

Pre-service primary school teachers’ knowledge of informal statistical inference

“…We found that the pre-service teachers preferred distributed sampling to random sampling, which is consistent with our previous findings (De Vetten et al 2018b) where we argued that this preference for distributed sampling could be due to a sense of loss of control when using random sampling. We called for more research to investigate this sense of control in choosing a sampling method.…”

“…Most respondents did not seem to understand that a representative sample can be used to draw useful, albeit uncertain, conclusions about an unknown population. So, apart from the unfamiliarity of pre-service teachers with ISI, it could be that many of them are reluctant to make generalizations beyond the data collected because they do not understand this underlying logic of sampling (Watson 2004). In De Vetten et al (2018b, we describe a first attempt at fostering preservice teachers' understanding of this logic.…”

“…To this end, when pre-service teachers conduct ISI investigations, research questions need to be chosen in such a way that the question posed allows the pre-service teacher to feel that description is insufficient and makes generalization natural and inevitable. One way of doing this is to have a situation in which the sample and the population are concrete and visible, such as taking a sample of pages from all books in a library to answer the question which word is most frequently used in the library (see De Vetten et al 2018b). A second way to evoke the need to engage in ISI is to place less emphasis on the data analysis phase of the empirical inquiry cycle.…”

How do students reason about statistical sampling with computer simulations? An integrative review from a grounded cognition perspective

“…Thus, children show sensitivity to the notion of fairness and inclusion in the sampling process, often in statistically non-normative ways (Meletiou-Mavrotheris & Paparistodemou, 2015). A later study by de Vetten et al (2018) suggests that adults also show similar types of distrust of simple random sampling.…”

Uma base de conhecimentos para ensinar estatística nos anos iniciais do ensino fundamental

“…E, mesmo não havendo a obrigatoriedade de abordagem de conceitos relacionados a essas medidas, o professor precisa entendê-las, para que compreenda como os números delas resultantes representam as informações quantitativas.A sugestão para a noção de variação dos dados não traz um aprofundamento complexo, mas entende-se como necessária. Nesse sentido, é realmente uma noção, com o entendimento mais conceitual, como por exemplo: a) a variação se refere a quanto os valores podem diferir entre si e pode ser calculada/medida; b) quanto mais próximos um valor do outro menor é o índice de variação, quanto mais dispersos os valores maior é a variação; c) o desvio-padrão é uma medida de variação particularmente importante, pois determina a variação dos dados em relação à média; e d) a interpretação dos desviospadrão deve ser realizada de maneira correta (TRIOLA, 2014) Vetten et al (2018). afirmam a validade do trabalho com a IEI com alunos do ensino elementar e como, essa abordagem, pode ser um importante caminho para o desenvolvimento da habilidade (EF05MA24) da BNCC(2017), que trata da interpretação de dados relacionados a diferentes contextos cotidianos (saúde, trânsito etc.)…”