Developing Statistical Thinking While Learning to Teach Statistics with Experiential Learning
Keywords:
mathematics teacher education research, statistical thinking, experiential learning, sampling, measures of central tendencyAbstract
Secondary preservice teachers’ experiences in their discipline studies may lead to preconceived ideas about appropriate pedagogies without understanding how to implement them. In our experience, many students claimed to be using an experiential learning pedagogy in their lesson planning when they were teaching directly from the textbook. Experiential learning is the underlying pedagogy used in Outdoor and Environmental Studies. It occurs through active engagement in an experience and subsequent reflection on the experience. In this article we present two teaching activities—Random and non-random sampling, and An appropriate measure of centre (mean or median)—to illustrate how the experiential learning cycle could be used to develop statistical thinking as part of a course learning how to teach secondary mathematics. In interviews, secondary mathematics preservice teachers described how they planned to address students’ misconceptions and develop students' statistical thinking in the future. The findings suggest that engaging in contextually specific abstract conceptualisation can develop statistical thinking.
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