COLLABORATIVE WORK IN STATISTICS AMONG PRE-SERVICE MATH TEACHERS: AN EXAMPLE FROM PORTUGAL

Collaboration is an important feature of today’s te acher education. According to several researchers, teachers are open to work collaborativ ely, although they often work in an individual and solitary manner. Since the nineties statistics education includes the need for children to be able to pose questions, collect, organize and repre sent data in a spirit of investigation and exploration. This is enhanced by implementing stude nt projects. The main research question in this paper is to clarify how three pre-service math teachers planned and prepared classes and reflected afterwards upon them. A qualitative metho dology was adopted. It is shown with empirical evidence that collaborative work between teachers is an important approach to solve difficulties in statistical and didactical knowledg e. Our results also show that these are the areas teachers have to improve in order to become more co nfident teachers of Statistics.