Killing Two Birds With One Stone: Developing Preservice Teachers' Statistical Thinking Through An Investigation Into Learners' Knowledge Of Statistics

Preservice Mathematics teachers are faced with the task of learning Mathematics subject content and developing pedagogical knowledge. This paper describes an attempt to address these tasks simultaneously by designing a course in which preservice teachers collect data related to learners' understanding of statistics and fractions, and develop their own statistical understanding and expertise through analysis of this data. The preservice teachers' statistical thinking was assessed by analysis of articles they wrote based on their own data. It is asserted that even in the presence of the requisite raw materials, statistical thinking is not intuitive and requires explicit teaching.