Conference Paper

  • While recent and ongoing research has begun to reveal ways that precollege students think about variation, little research has been done with the preservice teachers who will eventually serve such students. Specifically, more research is needed to understand what are the conceptions of variation held by elementary preservice teachers (EPSTs), and also how to shape the university courses where those preservice teachers learn. This paper, sharing an excerpt from an exploratory study aimed at EPSTs, describes changes in class responses to a probability task where variation is a key component. Overall, going from before to after a series of instructional interventions, responses reflected a more appropriate sensitivity to the presence of variation.

  • From the beginning of the nineties, the different curricular reforms in Spain have favoured the introduction of probability. However, the reality in the classroom is very different since teachers show resistance to accepting this curricular innovation. To explain this situation, the "Professional Development Teachers" research group in the University of Cadiz carried out research dealing with teachers' conceptions of probability, the sources of professional knowledge used to teach probability, and the probability content in Spanish textbooks. In this particular paper we will present results form a case study where teachers' arguments to justify their resistance to introducing probability in Compulsory Secondary Education are analyzed. A theoretical framework related to the knowledge of probability and pedagogical professional knowledge is introduced in order to interpret the teachers' reasoning and understand the evolution of teachers' intervention in the teaching and learning process.

  • The official inclusion of the teaching of graphing in school curricula has motivated increasing research and innovative pedagogical strategies such as the use of media graphs in school contexts. However, only a few studies have investigated knowledge about graphing among those who will teach this curricular content. We discuss aspects of the interpretation of media graphs among primary school student teachers from Brazil and England. We focus on data which came from questionnaires which gives evidence of elements of "Critical Sense," which involves the mobilisation of several kinds of knowledge and experiences, in the interpretation of statistical graphs.

  • In this paper we analyze a design experiment aimed at supporting the professional development in statistics of twelve middle-school teachers in the United States. We explain how adopting a sociocultural framework allowed us to account for teachers' struggles to make sense of instructional practices in statistics that place students' reasoning at the center of instructional decision-making. We also account for how the adoption of the sociocultural framework allowed us to envision a viable way in which to better support the professional development of the participating teachers.

  • Recent research in statistical reasoning has focused on the developmental process in students when learning statistical reasoning skills. This study investigates statistical reasoning from the perspective of individual differences. As manifestation of heterogeneity, students' prior attitudes toward statistics, measured by the extended Survey of Attitudes Toward Statistics (SATS: Schau, Stevens, Dauphinee and DeVecchio, 1995), and students' learning approaches, measured by the Inventory of Learning Styles (ILS; Vermunt, 2005) are used. Students' statistical reasoning abilities are identified by the Statistical Reasoning Assessment instrument (SRA; Garfield 1998, 2003). The aim of the study is to investigate the relationship between both attitudes and learning approaches versus reasoning abilities by estimating full structural equation models. Instructional implications of the models for the teaching of statistical reasoning are discussed.

  • Whether they are studying statistics as a disciplinary major or through service courses, students will be more motivated towards what they are learning, and will retain a richer recall of it, if they feel they are doing something worthwhile. I have previously argued that three elements in teaching are salient in giving a sense of worthwhileness: showing that statistics is interesting, useful, and substantial. The first two of these elements are already well discussed. But letting statistics be seen as a substantial discipline, in the sense of being resilient to challenging questioning prompted by students' own curiosity, has not been previously addressed in the statistics education literature. Here I show the kinds of challenging questions which serve this goal. The answers given need not be overly-detailed: what matters is that they satisfy students' curiosity. In this way they strengthen the students' sense that statistics is worth the effort of study.

  • The aims of the STARS (Statistical Resources from Real Datasets) project are to make available real datasets and associated scenarios applicable to a range of disciplines and to develop learning and assessment materials to accompany these datasets for use with various packages. The project team, based in 4 universities in England, have developed worksheets in Psychology, Health and Business, using mainly Excel, MINITAB, SPSS in both pdf format and Word. The worksheets are designed to be used in introductory statistics courses in service teaching and cater for a range of student abilities, backgrounds and needs. Further, resources for individualised datasets and assignments with solutions to be generated from the datasets have been produced. The materials developed and the concepts behind them have a far greater potential and use throughout the statistics teaching community.

  • Consultants are well aware of the skills we must impart. These include: an appreciation for the role of the work one does in the context of the research effort; an understanding of what we can and cannot do as statisticians; a general appreciation for modeling and visualization; and an understanding of the nuclear elements of modeling tools. All of these skills contribute to one's ability to communicate ideas to a client and, ultimately, to the reader of any findings. Changes in the toolkit for statisticians require that we continually learn. In this talk I describe a process that creates a continual improvement cycle for the mastery of these skills. By mastery, I mean that the student has demonstrated understanding through the application of a principle and taught what they have done to others, including non-professionals. The principles, based on modeling and visualization efforts, give rise to the nuclear elements that are the simple and communicable features of the tool.

  • During the fall 2005 the author taught a large introductory Statistics class at the University of Connecticut with the aid of a student personal response system (also known as "clickers"). Apart from its pedagogical value, the system has the secondary advantage of building vast day to day data on students' performance. This article presents an analysis of the data gathered from the course, together with conclusions and suggestions on how to collect and organize data for further educational studies.

  • Practice in doing consultancy, and in teaching consultancy skills to statisticians, improves that teaching, regardless of the teaching method used. Teaching consultancy skills involves emphasis on communication skills, making statisticians aware of the range of problems they might meet, and showing them ways of dealing with non-standard problems. Examples based on actual consultancy sessions are discussed in this paper, and suggestions are made as to how to integrate these into a course intended to equip students for work as a practical statistician.

Pages