The role of probability in curricula for children has fluctuated greatly over the past several decades. Recently, some countries have removed probability from their preschool and primary curricula, and others have retained it. One reason for such lack of agreement is that theory about early probability learning is still relatively new and under…

We describe how we used puppets as tools to draw 9 to 10-year-old students into conversations about probability. Puppets supported classroom discourse by putting forth probabilistic arguments for critique, introducing extreme and unusual examples of concepts, and introducing an element of surprise.

Normative discourse about probability requires shared meanings for disciplinary vocabulary. Previous research indicates that students' meanings for probability vocabulary often differ from those of mathematicians, creating a need to attend to developing students' use of language. Current standards documents conflict in their recommendations about…

The Common Core State Standards for Mathematics have a widespread impact on children's statistical learning opportunities. The Grade 6 standards are particularly ambitious in the goals they set. In this critique, experiences helping children work toward the Grade 6 Common Core statistics expectations are used in conjunction with previous research…

Qualitative classroom data from video recordings and students' written work can play important roles in improving mathematics instruction. In order to take full advantage of these data sources, it is helpful to have a strong analytic lens to orient one's reflections on the data. One promising analytic lens is the National Research Council's five…

Students can struggle to understand and use terms that describe probabilities. Such struggles lead to difficulties comprehending classroom conversations. In this article, we describe some specific misunderstandings a group of students (ages 11-12) held in regard to vocabulary such as "certain", "likely" and…

A hypothetical framework to characterize statistical knowledge for teaching (SKT) is described. Empirical grounding for the framework is provided by artifacts from an undergraduate course for prospective teachers that concentrated on the development of SKT. The theoretical notion of "key developmental understanding" (KDU) is used to identify…

In education, it is common to set aside older curriculum documents when newer ones are released. In fact, some instructional leaders have encouraged the "out with the old, in with the new" process by asking teachers to turn in all copies of the older document. Doing so makes sense when the old curriculum document is incompatible with the new.…

The purpose of this article is to sketch a hypothetical descriptive framework of statistical knowledge for teaching. Because statistics is a discipline in its own right rather than a branch of mathematics, the knowledge needed to teach statistics is likely to differ from the knowledge needed to teach mathematics. Doing statistics involves many…