Preservice elementary teachers' conceptual and procedural knowledge of mean, median, and mode

Abstract

The paper describes aspects of the statistical content knowledge of 46 preservice elementary school teachers. The preservice teachers responded to a written item designed to assess their knowledge of mean, median, and mode. The data produced in response to the written item were examined in light of the Structure of the Observed Learning Outcome (SOLO) Taxonomy (Biggs & Collis, 1982, 1991) and Ma’s (1999) conception of Profound Understanding of Fundamental Mathematics (PUFM). Four levels of thinking in regard to comparing and contrasting mean, median, and mode are described. Several different categories of written definitions for each measure of central tendency are also described. Connections to previous statistical thinking literature are discussed, implications for teacher education are given, and directions for further research are suggested.