Abstract:

We continue to believe that teachers' attitudes towards statistics can have a significant effect on their own statistical training,their way of teaching statistics,and on the future attitudes of their students.The influence of attitudes in teaching statistics in different contexts was previously studied in the work of Estrada et al.(2004,2010a,2010b),Martinsetal.(2011),and Martinsetal.(2012).This work is part of a broader study of Portuguese of attitudes towards statistics of Portuguese in-service teachers.Here, we used a qualitative content analysis of survey responses from Portuguese 2nd cycle in-service teachers (of students ages 10-11), focusing on 9 open-ended items from the EAEE–Escala de Actitudes hacia la Estadistica de Estrada(Estrada,2002).Our survey(Martinsetal.,2012) translated items from the EAEE into Portuguese.This translation was validated by an expert board of judges.All of the items comprised statements in which the respondents scored their level of agreement or disagreement on a five-point Likert scale.As the main purpose of the open-ended explanations in the survey was to analyze Portuguese teachers’ attitudes towards statistics in a qualitative way, we used content analysis to identify a more detailed set of explanations and their weights among teachers.The survey EAEE was presented during Sept2010–Oct2011 to Portuguese in-service 2ndCEB teachers (pupils aged 10-11 years,referred as 2nd cycle Portuguese basic education teachers-2ndCEBT).The teachers were from north and central Portugal and returned 246scoredEAEEs.All the 246 teachers received the same printed survey,and gave all the 25scores.All teachers were asked to complete the 9 open-ended explanations, and 132(54%) chose to do this for at least one of those 9 items, but only 41(17%of246;31%of132)did it to all 9 items.With respect to teachers’ explanations for positive attitudes in the items analyzed, we may highlight their view of the need for and interest in teaching statistics.These attitudes reinforce the idea that “statistics is not only valid for scientists”:statistics is useful for everyone.The 2ndCEBT revealed that they generally like learning and teaching statistics, and they see it as a tool to face objectively real-world problems.As regards teachers’ explanations for negative attitudes in the item“Some statistical information transmitted on television programs bothers me”-they referred their suspicion about the statistics presented on television and its manipulation through methodologies used and/or in analyses presented.This fact is confirmed by item“Statistics can manipulate the real” results.Were the other negative attitudes from the 2ndCEBT surveyed lead to the idea that they hardly use statistics in their daily lives either because it is something they do not need or are not interested in it.There scores also revealed that these teachers are not used to share statistical problems with their colleagues in a cooperative work.

Keywords:

Attitudes towards statistics, scales of attitudes, teachers’ training, 2nd Cycle of Portuguese basic education.