Prospective Mathematics Teachers Understanding of Classical and Frequentist Probability
Metadatos
Afficher la notice complèteEditorial
MDPI
Materia
Probability Relating the classical and frequentist views Teacher’s knowledge Assessment
Date
2021Referencia bibliográfica
Batanero, C.; Begué, N.; Álvarez-Arroyo, R.; Valenzuela-Ruiz, S.M. Prospective Mathematics Teachers Understanding of Classical and Frequentist Probability. Mathematics 2021, 9, 2526. https:// doi.org/10.3390/math9192526
Patrocinador
PID2019-105601GB-I00/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 (Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación); FQM-126 (Junta de Andalucía, Spain)Résumé
Strengthening the teaching of probability requires an adequate training of prospective
teachers, which should be based on the prior assessment of their knowledge. Consequently, the
aim of this study was to analyse how 139 prospective Spanish mathematics teachers relate the
classical and frequentist approaches to probability. To achieve this goal, content analysis was used
to categorize the prospective teachers’ answers to a questionnaire with open-ended tasks in which
they had to estimate and justify the composition of an urn, basing their answers on the results of
1000 extractions from the urn. Most of the sample proposed an urn model consistent with the data
provided; however, the percentage that adequately justified the construction was lower. Although
the majority of the sample correctly calculated the probability of an event in a new extraction and
chose the urn giving the highest probability, a large proportion of the sample forgot the previously
constructed urn model, using only the frequency data. Difficulties, such as equiprobability bias or
not perceiving independence of trials in replacement sampling, were also observed for a small part
of the sample. These results should be considered in the organisation of probabilistic training for
prospective teachers.