Literature Index

Unlike primary and secondary educators, professors in post-secondary education are not required to meet certification requirements in education. Expressly, they are not required to have demonstrated competencies in the areas of education that contribute to the process of educating undergraduate and graduate students, such as pedagogy or evaluation in a subject matter area. To address its responsibility for training graduate students as teachers as well as scholars and investigators, the Emory University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences implemented the Teaching Assistant and Teacher Training Opportunity (TATTO) for all graduate students in 1992. Each graduate department has instituted its own TATTO program with a consistent and Graduate School-approved format. In this paper we describe our experience over the last six years with the evolving teacher-training program in the Department of Biostatistics. In our program, we focus on developing communication skills for all graduates, even those who may not pursue an academic career involving teaching. We also discuss the merits and challenges of our course in pedagogy in biostatistics, as well as other training components, including instruction in statistical consultation. We have found that the interactive dynamic nature of this program is well-received by the students. We have also found that the students benefit from observing good teachers, with attention to the craft of teaching, and from the feedback given by these teachers on student teaching style.

Although reasoning about samples and sampling is fundamental to the legitimate practice of statistics, it often receives little attention in the school curriculum. This may be related to the lack of numerical calculations-predominant in the mathematics curriculum-and the descriptive nature of the material associated with the topic. This chapter will extend previous research on students' reasoning about samples by considering longitudinal interviews with 38 students 3 or 4 years after they first discussed their understanding of what a sample was, how samples should be collected, and the representing power of a sample based on its size. Of the six categories of response observed at the time of the initial interviews, all were confirmed after 3 or 4 years, and one additional preliminary level was observed.

Concerns about equity in the ways that schools are using the data from the results of their students' state-mandated exams (Confrey & Makar, in press) prompted this mixed-method study, based on the model of Design Research (Cobb et al., 2003). The study was conducted to provide insight into the ways that understanding of the statistical concepts of variation and distribution, developed in the context of learning about equity and assessment, can allow prospective teachers to broaden their understanding of equity and gain experience with conducting an inquiry of an ill-structured problem through the use of data generated by high-stakes tests to investigate equity and fairness in the accountability system. The study took place in an innovative one-semester course for preservice teachers designed to support and develop understanding of equity and fairness in accountability through data-based statistical inquiry (Confrey, Makar, and Kazak, 2004). The prospective teachers' investigations were conducted using Fathom Dynamic Statistics (Finzer, 2001), a learning software built for novice data analysts which emphasizes visualization and building inferential thinking through highlighting relationships between multiple variable displays. Semi-structured investigations during the course led up to a three-week self-designed inquiry project in which the prospective teachers used data to investigate an area of interest to them about equity in accountability, communicating their findings both orally and as a written paper. Results from the study provide insight into prospective teachers' experiences of conducting inquiry of ill-structured problems and their struggle with articulating beliefs of equity. The study also reports how statistical concepts documented in structured settings showed that the subjects developed rich conceptions of variation and distribution, but that the application of these concepts as evidence in their inquiry of an ill-structured problem was more challenging for them. No correlation was found between the level of statistical evidence in the structured and open-ended inquiry settings, however there was a significant correlation between prospective teachers degree of engagement with their topic of inquiry and the depth of statistical evidence they used, particularly for minority students. Implications and suggestions for improving the preparation of teachers in the areas of statistical reasoning, inquiry, equity, and interpreting assessment data are provided.