Whatever the debates about the relation between mathematics and statistics as disciplines, the latter is typically offered within school mathematics curricula. This relatively new inclusion has enhanced the opportunity for learners to experience a greater relevance of mathematics curricula to their own lives, and hence also created the imperative to better understand how best to organise teaching and learning toward such goals. Not surprisingly, teacher education has had to take on such challenges and in so doing brought a focus also on what happens within the halls of tertiary institutions. The question this paper addresses is how best do we prepare teachers to connect mathematics and statistics education to learners' own realities. If project work, within a broad social, cultural political approach, is one means for forging such links then there is a need to analyse and better understand the kinds of teacher education pedagogies that may be engaged to build the necessary knowledge, skills, attitudes and values among teachers.
The CAUSE Research Group is supported in part by a member initiative grant from the American Statistical Association’s Section on Statistics and Data Science Education