understanding of statistical variation: Implications for teaching and research

Concerns about the importance of variation in statistics education and alack of research in this topic led to a preliminary study which explored pre-service teachers ’ ideas in this area. The teachers completed a written questionnaire about variation in sampling and distribution contexts. Responses were categorised in relation to a framework that identified levels of statistical thinking. The results suggest that while many of the students appeared to acknowledge variation, they were not able to provide adequate explanations. Although the pre-service teachers have had more real-life expe-riences involving statistics and have been involved in the study of statistical concepts at secondary school level, they still demonstrated the same miscon-ceptions as those of younger students reported in research literature. While more students showed competence on the sampling question, they were less competent on the distribution task. This could be due to task format or contextual issues. The paper concludes by suggesting some implications for further research and teaching. Background Over the past 15 years, statistics has gained increased attention in our society. Many everyday activities require an understanding of statistics. Decisions concerning business, industry, employment, sports, health, law and opinion polling are made using an understanding of statistical information. Parallelling these trends, there has been a movement in many countries to include statistics at every level in the mathematics curricula. In western coun-tries such as Australia (Australian Education Council, 1991) and New Zealand (Ministry of Education, 1992) these developments are reflected in official documents and in materials produced for teachers. Clearly the emphasis in these documents is on producing intelligent citizens who can reason with statistical ideas and make sense of statistical information