Curriculum expectations for teaching science and statistics

This paper focuses on the curriculum links between Statistics and Science that teachers need to understand and apply in order to be effective teachers of the two fields of study. Meaningful Statistics does not exist without context, and Science is the content focus of Session 1A. Although curriculum documents differ from country to country, this paper uses extracts from The Australian Curriculum: Mathematics and the US Common Core State Standards for Mathematics and links the statistical ideas with the relevant parts of The Australian Curriculum: Science and the US Next Generation Science Standards for States, by States. Teachers of Mathematics need to be aware of the potential of Science to provide meaningful contexts within which to set statistical investigations. Similarly teachers of Science, developing methods for implementing investigations and experiments in their classrooms, need to be aware of the close ties to statistical tools for decision-making.