Attitudes towards statistics in future teachers of early childhood education

Abstract

We present a study about attitudes towards statistics in prospective early childhood teachers. It is widely known that mathematics and, particularly,statisticsare unpleasant for students. We have carried out a study on the attitudes towards statistics, applying a Likert scale test used and validated by several mathematics educationresearches. The results show that students value statistics positively and they consider them important to both their learning and their future teaching activity. Nonetheless, they also feel that statistics are unpleasant and they tend not to use them out of any educational environment.