Maria Meletiou-Mavrotheris¹ and Efstathios Mavrotheris<sup>2

1</sup>Department of Education, Cyprus College, Cyprus
²Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Cyprus College, Cyprus

EarlyStatistics, a project funded by the European Union under the Socrates-Comenius action, aims to enhance the quality of statistics education offered in European schools by facilitating intercultural professional development of teachers using exemplary web-based educational tools and resources. Acknowledging the fact that teachers are at the heart of any educational reform effort, the project consortium is currently developing and will pilot test an innovative online professional development course in statistics education targeting elementary and middle school teachers around Europe. The ideas of collaboration, inquiry, and exploration as processes of knowledge construction underpin the course development. The strategies employed include open-ended investigations, use of real-data, simulations, visualizations, collaboration and reflection. A central conviction underlying the course design is that learning as part of a community of practitioners can provide a useful model for teacher professional development. The course will support the development of a virtual community of practice that will help teachers to improve their teaching practices in statistics by sharing personal experiences, ideas, and resources with other teachers and relating them to their teaching practices.

Maximum dissemination of the project outputs will be achieved through a dedicated information base supporting multilingual content, transnational collaboration of teachers, and accumulation of end-user knowledge. The information base will offer access to validated pedagogical models, didactic approaches, and technology-enhanced and culturally-adapted resource materials, resulting in a complete and flexible teacher professional development program in statistics education, that will be of use not only to the teachers participating in the course, but also for independent study by teachers across Europe and beyond. The project outputs will also be useful to academic experts in statistics education, to national and European Education boards, to teacher training institutions, and to designers of online professional development programs. The ultimate beneficiaries will be students, who will eventually benefit from improved curricula and teaching practices.

Keywords: community of practice, professional development, statistics, distance education

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