Transforming attitudes towards statistics and its teaching: an exploratory study with early childhood teachers

This study determined the impact of a training workshop on teaching statistics in early childhood education on the attitudes towards statistics and its teaching of 37 early childhood education teachers. For this purpose, a mixed methodological approach was used, which considered the application of a scale of attitudes towards statistics and its teaching before and after the training workshop. This was complemented with the assessment of the overall satisfaction with the training experience, including those aspects that the teachers considered necessary to address or improve in future implementations. The results indicate a significant change in the attitudes of the participating teachers in all the components of the scale. Thus, it is evident from the results that the attitudes of the pre-school teachers towards statistics and its teaching can be transformed in the context of a training workshop based on the characterisation of knowledge for teaching mathematics in pre-school education and on the approach of the mathematics teaching itineraries. Therefore, it is concluded that it is imperative to provide early childhood teachers with professional development opportunities to improve their attitudes towards statistics and its teaching and, why not, to enhance their mathematical and didactical knowledge about teaching statistics in early childhood education.