Results regarding the statistical investigation implementation in class: • The majority of the students

who answered this question stated a theme (recycling) and a survey or questions to be answered, which is probably related to their own experience in class;

• Only one student was able to briefly discuss the class implementation of the investigation. All the others connected the task to doing the investigation itself.

Results regarding the organization of data and the comprehension of graphics:• These students revealed more difficulty with the organization of quantitative continuous data;• From the students who answered these questions, the ones from day classes had more problems with the construction of tables and graphics;• The students from night classes were the ones who were able to answer correctly more questions regarding the reading between and beyond data;• 7 students, when asked to make generalizations based on a graphic representation, used data from their own experience.

Objectives:• To analyze future elementary and kindergarten teachers’ knowledge of statistics and of its didactics;• To evaluate the written questionnaire efficacy.

General Results:• A student answered, in average, to 70% of the questionnaire

and left the other 30% blank.

Conclusions:• It is unclear if students didn’t answer questions because they didn’t know or because

the questionnaire was too long;• Night classes students performed better on the organization of data and in questions

with more advanced reading data;• Students revealed some misconceptions regarding the central measures of tendency;• Students still used their own experience in class to plan and discuss a future task with

students.

Further Research and Implications:• It is necessary to shorten the questionnaire, however including

more questions regarding the didactics of statistics, and apply it to a larger population;. It will be also important to follow the questionnaire with individual interviews;

• Students should have more experience with the didactics of statistics during their training.

Theoretical Background:Curcio (1987) components of graphic comprehension: reading the data, reading between the data and reading beyond the data; Mokros & Russel (1990/1995) conceptions of average: as mode, as algorithm, as reasonable, as midpoint and as balance; Monteiro (2009) properties of average.

21 21 175 5 9

Questions about organization of data

Answer No Answer

Correct Problems with Frequency Tables

Problems with Graphic Representations

18%

67% 71%

30%

50% 50%

Misconceptions regarding the organization of dataDay Classes Night Classes

Read the Data Read Between the Data

Read Beyond the Data

82%94%

59%

78%

100%

67%

Questions about reading graphs

Day Classes Night Classes

No answer

Answer

Theme

Surve

y or Q

uestions

Data Orga

nization

Data analysis

Steps o

f an in

vesti

gation

Class Im

plementation

47%53%

29%41%

12%0%

6% 6%

56%44%

33%44%

22%11% 11%

0%

Question about planning a statistical investigation

Day Classes Night Classes

Future Elementary and Kindergarten Teachers’ Knowledge of Statistics and of its Didactics

Raquel Santos, Escola Superior de Educação de Santarém, Portugal

Methodology:• 26 future elementary and kindergarten teachers;• Written pilot-questionnaire with 14 questions (total of 26 subquestions).

12% 23%38% 31% 38% 35%

58% 69% 58%85% 77%

62% 69% 62% 65%42% 31% 42%35% 27% 23% 23%

0%

54%31%

0% 0%

Questions about statistical measures

No answer Answer Correct Results regarding the statistical measures:• These students revealed that they were not able

to attend to different measures simultaneously and to solve problems with qualitative data;

• Regarding the meaning of central measures of tendency, students comprehended better the mode and no one showed a correct understanding of the average;

• A low percentage of students were able to solve problems regarding different characteristics of the average;

• 32% of the students made confusion between the average and the median; 72% only used the average as a measure to represent a set of data; 38% of the students had a algorithm conception of the average.