Teach-Stat is a professional development program for elementary teachers (grades K-6) in North Carolina funded by the National Science Foundation and jointly sponsored by the University of N.C. Mathematics and Science Education Network, the N.C. Department of Public Instruction and the N.C. Science and Mathematics Alliance. The Teach-Stat faculty are developing materials to help teachers expand their knowledge and understanding of statistics and to help them teach it to elementary students through an activity-based, data investigations approach. We expect teachers who participate in the Teach-Stat program will reframe the way they teach mathematics, science and social studies through the integration of data analysis activities into these subject areas. This paper provides an overview of Teach-Stat, a brief description of some of the workshop materials that have been developed for it, and a preliminary report on several research results that are beginning to emerge from the project.
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