Nurturing Preservice Mathematics Teachers’ Reasoning about Measures of Central Tendency and Variability

Abstract

This study aimed to examine the development of preservice mathematics teachers’ reasoning about measures of central tendency and variability. To this end, a classroom teaching experiment enriched by four compelling learning activities was conducted with 14 preservice teachers. The activities in the teaching experiment were designed to promote classroom discussion and collaboration. The study’s data comprised the video recordings of class sessions, field notes, and participants’ artifacts. The findings revealed the ideas about statistical measures generated by the preservice teachers based on their communal reasoning in the classroom. When using appropriate statistical measures for the context, they made sense of the measures of central tendency as indicators of certainty in situations including uncertainty. In other words, they could integrate central tendency and variability measures rather than just focusing on them independently. This study has valuable implications for teacher education in developing preservice teachers’ statistical reasoning on central tendency and variability measures.