The collection of studies in this book represents cutting-edge research on statistical literacy, reasoning, and thinking in the emerging area of statistics education. This chapter describes some of the main issues and challenges, as well as implications for teaching and assessing students, raised by these studies. Because statistics education is a new field, taking on its own place in educational research, this chapter begins with some comments on statistics education as an emerging research area, and then concentrates on various issues related to research on statistical literacy, reasoning, and thinking. Some of the topics discussed are the need to focus research, instruction, and assessment on the big ideas of statistics; the role of technology in developing statistical reasoning; addressing the diversity of learners (e.g., students at different educational levels as well as their teachers); and research methodologies for studying statistical reasoning. Finally, we consider implications for teaching and assessing students and suggest future research directions.
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