The purpose of this thesis has been to contribute knowledge about subject-specific didactic transformations in inferential statistics within primary school teacher education. The thesis project has focused on identifying what characterises relevant subject-specific didactic content in informal inferential statistics for prospective teachers, and which teaching strategies, based on models and modelling perspectives, can effectively help prospective teachers develop these skills and knowledge. This thesis comprises five publications grounded in two educational design studies. The first study concentrated on informal inferential statistics as a teaching topic, examining a classroom setting where students with limited experience in statistical inference conducted statistical investigations. This initial study served as a fundamental prerequisite for the second study within mathematics teacher education. The second study involved four design cycles, focusing on designing didactic content and resources. Data included prospective teachers’ lesson plans and recorded presentations for their proposed lessons in statistics.

This thesis underscores the importance of teacher education programs that provide prospective primary school teachers with experience in planning statistics lessons centred around statistical investigations and key statistical concepts, including inferential statistics. The main findings include a didactic model for integrating data modelling and informal statistical inference, design principles and strategies to prepare prospective primary teachers, and recommendations for subject-specific didactic content. The findings suggest that prospective teachers often face challenges when formulating and reasoning about these big ideas. Given the overcrowded curriculum in teacher education, this research demonstrates that educational design research is a suitable approach for investigating and promoting subject-specific didactic transformation in teacher education.

Syftet med denna avhandling har varit att bidra med kunskap om relevant ämnesdidaktiskt innehåll i statistik för grundlärarstudenter samt om undervisningsstrategier som kan stödja deras utveckling i att undervisa ämnet. Avhandlingsprojektet tillämpade en ämnesdidaktisk designforskningsstrategi genom två designstudier. Den första studien fokuserade på inferentiell statistik som ämnesinnehåll i skolstatistik, medan den andra studien involverade fyra designcykler i lärarutbildningen, med fokus på ämnesdidaktiskt innehåll och resurser. Empirin i den andra studien inkluderade lärarstudenternas undervisningsplaner och filmade presentationer av en tänkt statistikundervisning. Huvudresultatet består av ett ämnesdidaktiskt ramverk för integrerad undervisning i datamodellering och informell statistisk inferens, samt designprinciper och strategier som syftar till att förbereda grundlärarstudenter på ett ändamålsenligt sätt. Avhandlingen uppmärksammar vikten av en lärarutbildning där lärarstudenter får erfarenhet av att planera statistikundervisning med fokus på statistiska undersökningar och bärande statistiska idéer, såsom informell statistisk inferens. Vidare framgår det att didaktisk designforskning utgör en lämplig ansats för att utforska och främja ämnestransformationer inom lärarutbildningen.

This presentation is part of a Ph.D. project that aims to increase knowledgeabout how to support the development of teacher students’ pedagogical contentknowledge (PCK) for teaching statistical inference. Dealing with the existingdiversity of theoretical approaches is a well-known challenge for the researchcommunity. The focus of this short presentation is to compare two reputable frameworks: Mathematical knowledge for teaching (MKT) and Refinedconsensus model (RCM) for pedagogical content knowledge. This comparisonwill highlight their contributions, merits, shortcomings, and possible connections to evaluate and guide an ongoing teaching and learning design in teachereducation for primary school.

Recently, researchers have encouraged the teaching of statistical inference to students at all levels. However, what constitutes pre-service teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge for statistical inference has not yet been given specific attention in research. This paper presents a qualitative study of pre-service teachers participating in a collaborative learning setup in a mathematics course to be prepared for teaching statistics in primary school aged 6–10 years. The study reported here is the first cycle of a design research project. This first-phase study explores how pre-service teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge for statistical inference can be developed during their mathematics course. The findings show that pre-service teachers’ learning opportunities regarding pedagogical content knowledge for statistical inference are insufficient. Based on the initial results, an initial conjecture map was constructed that guides the forthcoming design cycle.