Author(s):
Need: This project serves the national interest by building a community that will transform undergraduate teacher preparation so that future mathematics teachers are prepared to effectively teach modern data science and statistics (DS&S). Society demands that citizens be statistically and data literate, resulting in growing efforts to include more DS&S in the K-12 curriculum. However, mathematics teacher education programs often minimally address DS&S in comparison to other branches of mathematics, and new teachers tend to lack content knowledge and confidence to teach statistics topics. To meet these demands, new teachers will need a transformed teacher education experience to be prepared to foster students’ statistical and data literacy for modern society. Expected Outcomes: Our central aim is to transform undergraduate teacher education programs so that future teachers are prepared to effectively teach modern DS&S through experiences and courses in their programs. We will do this through meeting three major goals: 1) Investigate the current systems in undergraduate teacher preparation for teaching DS&S, and use the findings to drive improvement efforts. 2) Build and sustain a DS&S teacher education networked improvement community. 3) Reach a broad, large, and diverse teacher education audience through developing, curating and disseminating high quality DS&S teacher education curriculum materials. The transformative efforts of this project will focus on modifications of curriculum within courses and programs, innovations to technological tools, faculty development at a broad range of institutions, and systemic change to mathematics teacher education.Guiding Questions: The guiding questions for meeting goal 1 are: What are early career mathematics teachers’ beliefs, knowledge, and practices related to teaching DS&S? How does the current system of mathematics teacher education address teacher preparation for DS&S? The answers to these questions will inform the improvement efforts undertaken by the project’s networked improvement community.Broader Impacts: The project will transform DS&S undergraduate teacher education programs by creating and sustaining a community of organizational partners and faculty from teacher education programs in a wide range of institutions across the U.S. who are working towards the central aim. Improving undergraduate program experiences and training of teachers in teaching DS&S in institutions across the U.S. will better prepare a diverse workforce of future teachers to enact practices in diverse K-12 classrooms, leading to stronger preparation of K-12 students as data literate citizens ready to engage in careers in DS&S, as well as other STEM disciplines.
Coauthors
Rick Hudson, University of Southern Indiana, Evansville, IN; Hollylynne Lee, NC State University, Raleigh, NC; Gemma Mojica, NC State University, Raleigh, NC; William Finzer, Concord Consortium, El Cerrito, CA
