Korean Preservice Elementary Teachers’ Abilities to Identify Equiprobability Bias and Teaching Strategies

Abstract

Equiprobability bias (EB) is one of the frequently observed misconceptions in probability education in K-12 and can be affected by a problem context. As future teachers, preservice teachers need to have a stable understanding of probability and to have the knowledge to identify EB in their students regardless of the problem context. However, there are few studies to explore how preservice teachers identify students’ EB and how they respond to students’ EB. This study investigated Korean preservice elementary school teachers’ abilities to identify students’ EB in two problem contexts, marble and baseball problems, as well as their teaching strategies for correcting students’ EB within each problem. Ninety-six preservice elementary school teachers participated in this study. They were presented with two problems with students having EB and were asked to write lesson plays. From the analysis of their lesson plays, it was found that 87% of the preservice teachers identified students’ EB in both problems, and in the baseball problem, 13% of them did not. Three teaching strategies for correcting students’ EB in each problem were found. Based on the results, implications for preservice elementary teacher education were discussed.