Literature Index

Many leaders of our profession have called for improvements in the way we educate statisticians. Sound recommendations have been made by many, based on real-world experience in the practice of statistical science. These calls for reform have gone largely unheeded, at least in part because of our current paradigm of statistical education. Statistics is seen, by many, as strictly a graduate discipline, yet constraints on the time to complete a graduate degree makes adopting many of the reforms that have been suggested very difficult. It is argued in this paper that a new paradigm of statistical education is needed that provides for strong undergraduate programs in statistics. Such programs would give the profession wider recognition and provide additional entries into the discipline.

Distance education and online learning opportunities, collectively known as "e-learning", are becoming increasingly used in higher education. Nationally, online enrollment increased to 3.2 million students in 2005, compared to 2.3 million in 2004.[1] Furthermore, nearly 60% of higher education institutions identify e-learning as part of their long-term education strategy.[1] Newer educational technologies including course management systems and Internet-based conferencing software can be used to both deliver content and engage participants as part of a social learning community. However, even experienced faculty can face pedagogical and operational challenges as they transition to the online environment. This interactive presentation will discuss a systematic approach to developing web-based instruction, with our experience as a case example.

The study sough to describe the statistical thinking of high school students. The two research questions guiding the study were: (i) What are the defining characteristics of different patterns of high school students' statistical thinking within the processes of describing, organizing and reducing, representing, analyzing, and collecting data? (ii) What levels of statistical thinking can be associated with each of the patterns? In order to answer the two research questions, high school students of various grade levels and mathematical backgrounds and recent high school graduates were asked to solve statistical thinking tasks during clinical interview sessions. The cognitive model described by Biggs and Collis (1982, 1991) was applied in differentiating among patterns of sophistication in the students' responses to the interview tasks. The study identified and characterized levels of thinking which provide the basis of a framework useful for advising instruction, curriculum development, and further research in the area of high school statistics.