"Maths outside of maths": Pre-service teachers' awareness of mathematical and statistical thinking across teachers' professional work

Abstract

Mathematical and statistical thinking is involved across the breadth of people's home and work life and leisure activities. This paper reports on an aspect of a project that aimed to develop pre-service teacher awareness of the mathematical and statistical thinking required across the breadth of primary teachers' professional role. This thinking is conceptualised as the mathematics and statistics embedded in each of the curriculum learning areas, in data literacy, and administration and management tasks. Mentor meetings indicated pre-service teachers who were completing a one-year graduate diploma initially had a limited awareness of the extent of this thinking. Through focus group discussions across the year participating pre-service teachers' commentary showed an increased awareness and appreciation of the breadth of contexts where teachers might encounter mathematics and statistics thinking beyond mathematics lessons. Given awareness is fundamental to learning and subsequent action we posit that developing this awareness during teacher education is important.