Collaborative Professional Development for Statistics Teaching: A Case Study of Two Middle-School Mathematics Teachers

The recent introduction of statistics into the Brazilian curriculum has presented a multi-problematic situation for teacher professional development. Drawing on research in the areas of teacher development and statistical inquiry, we propose a Teacher Professional Development Cycle (TPDC) model. This paper focuses on two teachers who planned a lesson in collaboration with other teachers, implemented the lesson, and then reported on the implementation. Results indicate that the TPDC model has the potential to begin to upskill teachers with multi-dimensional development needs. TPDC provides an environment for helping teachers overcome their current beliefs and attitudes towards statistics and statistics teaching. The implications of our TPDC model for improving teachers' practice in statistics are discussed.