Literature Index

The profession of statistics has adopted too narrow a definition of itself. As a consequence, both statistics and statisticians play too narrow a role in policy formation and execution. Broadening that role will require statisticians to change the curriculum they use to train and develop their own professionals and what they teach nonstatisticians about statistics. Playing a proper role will require new research from statisticians that combines our skills in methods with other techniques of social scientists.

A brief reflection on the experiences of a New Zealand woman statistician. Comments were made on the value of formal and informal training in the academic environment, the issues and problems faced upon moving to a private sector position (in insurance), and the potentially valuable contribution of statistics and statisticians to the management decision-making process.

Determining the main research questions in statistics education is not an easy task, because there are so many important and unanswered questions relating to the teaching and learning of statistics. Nevertheless, in SERN 1 (2) we proposed a list of questions that we considered important to investigate, given the current state of research in statistics education as well as our own ideas and research traditions. We reflected on the diversity of people involved in statistics education research, the difficulties of having access to the literature in this area, and the challenges of training statistics education researchers within different disciplines. Our short note was complemented in SERN 2(1) by reactions from a number of colleagues from different countries who represent different backgrounds and experiences. These differences as well as the interdisciplinary nature of statistics education research were visible in the variety of responses and suggestions in the written responses. In this rejoinder, we attempt to synthesise the main points raised by the different reactors to whom we are very grateful, as they provided many important complementary ideas. It would be a too big a task to reply in detail to each of the points raised as some of them deserve a full issue of the Newsletter. We are therefore only offering remarks here regarding a few of the main points raised. We plan to focus on some of the remaining topics in future issues of our Newsletter.

This paper aims to contribute to the emerging literature on capacity-building in statistics education by examining issues pertaining to the readiness of teachers in a developing country to teach basic statistical topics. The paper reflects on challenges and barriers to building statistics capacity at grassroots level in a developing country, based in part on lessons learnt from the design of an in-service intervention for teachers in South Africa, and on illustrative data about teachers’ attitudes, collected as part of this intervention. The paper reflects on implications for future design of interventions, as well as on research needs that can inform future capacity-building in statistics education in developing countries.