Necessary Knowledge for Teaching Statistics: Example of the Concept of Variability (original) (raw)

This chapter explores teachers' statistical knowledge in relation to the concept of variability. Twelve high school mathematics teachers were asked to respond to scenarios describing students' strategies, solutions, and misconceptions when presented with a task based on the concept of variability. The teachers' responses primarily helped us analyze their comprehension and practices associated with the concept of variability and gain insight into how to teach this concept. Secondly, the study shows that students and high school teachers share the same conceptions on this subject. Keywords Professional knowledge • Statistics • Teacher's knowledge Teaching practices • Variability 10.1 Context The importance of statistics in our lives is such that data management has become a major key in the education of responsible citizens (Baillargeon 2005; Konold and Higgins 2003). The abundance of statistical data available on the internet, the studies reported on television news, or the studies and survey results published in newspapers and magazines all show that nowadays, citizens must have analytical skills to develop critical judgment and a personal assessment of the data they are confronted with daily. This role of statistics in our current society makes it necessary to consider teaching this discipline to train our students to be citizens of tomorrow. If the goal is to encourage statistical thinking in students as future citizens, then not only do we need to teach basic statistical data interpretation skills, but it is also essential to teach the