A Multi-Country Study of Teachers’ Beliefs About Implications of COVID-19 for Changing the Teaching of Statistics and Mathematics

This paper reports on a jointly organized exploration by researchers from four countries (Brazil, Australia, South Africa, Israel) concerning teachers’ perceptions about statistics and mathematics content in print and digital media regarding COVID-19 (coronavirus) issues and its possible impact on future statistics education. The study involves a mixed-methods, multiple case-study design, with an online survey followed by focus groups. Preliminary and selected results are reported, highlighting teachers' views of new topics that should be added to the curriculum, teachers' perceived autonomy to make changes, tensions regarding teaching methods that can be used to implement new needed content, and more. The study has numerous implications regarding the link between curricula, school-level processes, teaching practices, and new societal needs for statistics and mathematics knowledge.