VARIABILITY IN A PROBABILITY CONTEXT: DEVELOPING PRESERVICE TEACHERS' UNDERSTANDING

While recent and ongoing research has begun to reveal ways that precollege students think about variation, little research has been done with the preservice teachers who will eventually serve such students. Specifically, more research is needed to understand what are the conceptions of variation held by elementary preservice teachers (EPSTs), and also how to shape the university courses where those preservice teachers learn. This paper, sharing an excerpt from an exploratory study aimed at EPSTs, describes changes in class responses to a probability task where variation is a key component. Overall, going from before to after a series of instructional interventions, responses reflected a more appropriate sensitivity to the presence of variation.