Our interest in the techno-mathematical literacies employees need in their jobs has led us to do case studies in different industrial sectors and to design learning opportunities for improving employees' techno-mathematical literacies. We conceptualise the learning opportunities not as training or transfer, but as forms of "boundary crossing" between employees from a company and us as researchers. Two examples are given in which packaging managers explore and discuss a realistic problem using TinkerPlots, an educational software tool. The results emphasise how important it is to allow managers to bring their ideas and concerns to the problem situation so they can connect these to statistical theory that is relevant in statistical process control (SPC). This approach is contrasted with SPC training we have observed in two industrial sectors.
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