An Investigation into the statistics education of preservice mathematics teachers in an Irish University

This article introduces a conceptual framework for statistical knowledge for teaching (henceforth SKT), which addresses some noted gaps identified in the research literature on statistics education. It is proposed that the use and adaptation—for the case of statistics—of the model of mathematical knowledge for teaching (henceforth MKT) developed by Ball et al. (J Teach Educ 59:389–407, 2008), as well as an extension of that model—and of almost all the few conceptualizations of SKT proposed to date—addressing some of its limitations, may help to gain a deeper insight into the knowledge needed to teach statistics effectively. In the present chapter, the components of this new framework for SKT are elicited, identified, and described through a set of tasks that examine teachers’ conceptions of variability in diverse statistical contexts (as in Shaughnessy (Second handbook of research on mathematics teaching and learning. Reston, VA: NCTM, 2007)), as well as teachers’ subject matter and pedagogical content knowledge in relation to the statistical ideas involved in such tasks.