Pre-service Teachers’ Understanding of Graphs in Statistics in the Context of Lesson Study

Abstract

This study aims to examine pre-service teachers’ understandings of graphs and how their understandings about graphs have transformed into instructional practices as they participated in a lesson study. It was employed case study and three pre-service teachers participated. They initially viewed graphs as tools for organizing and representing data. As the lesson study progressed, they began to view graphs as tools to answer statistical questions. This fundamental transformation in their understanding resulted in a change in how they designed and implemented their lesson plans. They designed tasks around a statistical question and made connections with this question while deciding the type of graph and interpreting the graph. In addition, they anticipated students’ possible conceptions. Hence, for these pre-service teachers, understanding the role graphs as tools to answer statistical questions can be considered as a key development understanding (KDU), which was built on multiple experiences of designing, implementing and evaluating lessons.