It is clear to all of those who are attending this conference that statistics should be an important component in the education of all people and that statistics education should begin with young children and be carried on continuously throughout the years of formal education. However, a rather large percentage of teachers, especially at the school level, have not themselves experienced an adequate statistics education and hence lack knowledge about statistical topics per se as well as what types of statistical activities would be appropriate for their students and how to integrate such activities into their course of study. It is necessary to attack this cycle of ignorance from several directions: 1) the initial training of teachers should have an adequate statistical component; 2) there should be a variety of inservice programs for practicing teachers at colleges, within school systems, and for teacher self-study; 3) curriculum developers and directors should more enthusiastically incorporate adequate statistical activities in their programs and courses of study; 4) there should be more active research into questions of statistical didactics; and 5) there should be developed more effective statistical lessons and learning sequences for students.
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