Teacher capacity as a key element of national curriculum reform in statistical thinking: A comparative study between Australia and China

Abstract

This study uses a construct of Teacher Capacity to examine how Australian and Chinese teachers understand and give effect to new curriculum content in “Statistics and Probability” for the upper primary and junior secondary years. The study involved 82 teachers—41 in each country. Their responses to a questionnaire were analysed qualitatively and quantitatively in terms of four criteria which form the basis of our construct of teacher capacity: Knowledge of Mathematics, Interpretation of the Intentions of the Official Mathematics Curriculum, Understanding of Students’ Thinking and Design of Teaching. These analyses gave rise to three classifications of teacher capacity: High, Medium and Low C..