Teacher learning about probabilistic reasoning in relation to teaching it in an Advanced Certificate in Education (ACE) programme

Abstract

I report on what teachers in an Advanced Certificate in Education (ACE) inservice
programme learned about probabilistic reasoning in relation to teaching
it. I worked ‘on the inside\' using my practice as a site for studying teaching and
learning. The teachers were from three different towns in the Northern Cape
province and had limited teaching contact time, as is the nature of ACE programmes.
Findings revealed a complicated picture, where some teachers were
prepared to consider influences of their intuitive probabilistic reasoning on
formal probabilistic reasoning when it came to teaching. It was, however, the
‘genuineness\' of teacher learning which was the issue that the findings have to
address. Therefore a speculative, hopeful strategy for affecting teacher learning
in mathematics teacher education practice is to sustain disequilibrium between
dichotomies such as formal and intuitive probabilistic reasoning, which has
analogies in content and pedagogy, and subject matter and method.

South African Journal of Education Vol. 28 (1) 2008: pp. 19-38