Nicola Justice (Pacific Lutheran University), Kelly Findley (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), Florian Berens (University of Tübingen), Christopher Kinson (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)
Abstract
Background. For the statistics community to recruit and retain a diverse set of students, it would be helpful to know statistics majors’ perceptions of their discipline, perceptions of their experiences, and how these interplay with their identities. While some studies have explored students’ conceptions of statistics (e.g., Bond et al., 2012; Findley & Berens, 2020; Justice et al., 2020; Rolka & Bulmer, 2005), most of these studies involve students who are not statistics majors, and naturally, identity plays a minor (if any) role. Yet, research in STEM disciplines suggests students’ identities hold an important role in their motivation, persistence, and other positive outcomes (e.g. Perez et al. 2014). This qualitative case study uses a disciplinary appropriation lens (Levrini et al., 2015) to analyze data collected from semi-structured interviews with nine first-year statistics students. This research explores students’ developing statistical perspectives with an eye toward how the field can support them as they carve out authentic roles and opportunities for themselves within the community. We plan to continue interviewing the same participants each year throughout their undergraduate careers to learn how these identities and perspectives develop over time.
Methods. In Fall of 2021 and 2022, we invited nine incoming statistics majors of varied gender, race, and academic backgrounds to complete two semi-structured interviews that bookended their first-year experiences at a large, public research university in the midwestern United States. Students described their perceptions of statistics and what a statistician does, and shared how they became interested in the discipline. The data include students’ drawings of their personification of statistics in addition to interview transcripts. The analytical framework that shapes our analysis of the data is drawn from the disciplinary appropriation lens used by Levrini et al. (2015).
Findings. Based on the markers of disciplinary appropriation, we have thus far identified several roles students appear to envision for themselves including data journalist, data engineer, data sage, and data consultant. Our initial observations suggest the strength of perceptions and identities appear to be strongly related to experience with projects that go beyond textbook-style story problems. Two primary successful recruiting and identity formation strategies appear to be math outreach programs that uplift statistics to high school students and enjoyable AP course experiences. Students also expressed different expectations around the role of coding, which may influence identity formation.
Implications. We expect the results of our study to inform teaching and recruiting practices that promote a more diverse statistical community and improve retention in statistics. We also expect to find links between identity formation and participation in the discipline, and we hope to find potential approaches for how we might be able to strengthen both. We plan to conduct follow-up research at the end of subsequent years in the major to continue to learn how these identities appear to grow and change in strength and nature, and how these identities may be linked to retention in the discipline.