In this paper, we summarise several components of our recent research into students' conceptions<br>of statistics, their learning of statistics, our teaching of statistics, and their perceptions of their<br>future professional work. We have obtained this information on the basis of phenomenographic<br>analyses of several series of interviews with students studying statistics, both as statistics majors<br>and as service students. In each of these cases, the broadest views relate in some way to personal<br>connection, growth and change - in other words, they contain a strong ontological component<br>above and beyond the standard epistemological component of learning. We discuss the<br>importance of personal change in becoming a statistician - or an informed user of statistics - and<br>investigate the pedagogical conditions under which such change is likely to occur.
The CAUSE Research Group is supported in part by a member initiative grant from the American Statistical Association’s Section on Statistics and Data Science Education