Statistical events and estimated probabilities increasingly influenced daily decision making and debates of social issues (Lee, 1999).Thus, National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM, 1989) has put emphasis on the data analysis and probability concepts for grades pre-kindergarten (PK) through 12 in the last 15 years.
The concept of the probability is one of the mathematical topics about which students are more likely to have misconceptions (Shaughnessy, 1981).This might result from the lack of knowledge of the teachers. Shaughnessy (1992) stated that the effectiveness of the probability instruction depends on those who will teach it. Furthermore, it was stated that teachers had less experience when they were pre-service teachers. Pre-service teachers’ misconceptions in terms of probability will affect knowledge of the students since they are the future teachers. Even though this is the case, there is limited number of studies investigating misconceptions regarding probability of pre-service elementary mathematics teachers (Ozaytabak, 2004).Thus, it is useful to examine the probabilistic misconceptions that pre-service elementary mathematics teachers have.
The purpose of this study was to investigate the misconceptions of pre-service elementary mathematics teachers on probability. In order to provide effective instruction, mathematics teacher educators need to know what pre-service teachers know about probability and how well they understand it. Hence, investigating these misconceptions will give useful information to these educators.With this purpose, the research question of this study is stated as follows:
What kinds of misconceptions do pre-service elementary teachers have regarding probability?

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