Increased attention is being paid to the need for statistically educated citizens: statistics is now included in the K-12 mathematics curriculum, increasing numbers of students are taking courses in ...high school, and introductory statistics courses are required in college. However, increasing the amount of instruction is not sufficient to prepare statistically literate citizens. A major change is needed in how statistics is taught. To bring about this change, three dimensions of teacher knowledge need to be addressed: their knowledge of statistical content, their pedagogical knowledge, and their statistical-pedagogical knowledge, i.e., their specific knowledge about how to teach statistics. This book is written for mathematics and statistics educators and researchers. It summarizes the research and highlights the important concepts for teachers to emphasize, and shows the interrelationships among concepts. It makes specific suggestions regarding how to build classroom activities, integrate technological tools, and assess students’ learning. This is a unique book. While providing a wealth of examples through lessons and data sets, it is also the best attempt by members of our profession to integrate suggestions from research findings with statistics concepts and pedagogy. The book’s message about the importance of listening to research is loud and clear, as is its message about alternative ways of teaching statistics. This book will impact instructors, giving them pause to consider: 'Is what I’m doing now really the best thing for my students? What could I do better?' J. Michael Shaughnessy, Professor, Dept of Mathematical Sciences, Portland State University, USA
To promote understanding of and interest in working with data among diverse student populations, we developed and studied a high school mathematics curriculum module that examines income inequality ...in the United States. Designed as a multi-week set of applied data investigations, the module supports student analyses of income inequality using U.S. Census Bureau microdata and the online data analysis tool the Common Online Data Analysis Platform (CODAP). Pre- and post-module data show that use of this module was associated with statistically significant growth in students' understanding of fundamental data concepts and individual interests in statistics and data analysis, with small to moderate effect sizes. Student survey responses and interview data from students and teachers suggest that the topic of income inequality, features within CODAP, the use of person-level data, and opportunities to engage in multivariable thinking helped to support critical data literacy and its foundations among participating students. We describe our definitions of data literacy and critical data literacy and discuss curriculum strategies to develop them.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
BFBNIB, DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NMLJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Promoting positive student attitudes towards stochastics has become a core goal of statistics education reform, and we argue that this starts with the teachers during their teacher preparation ...program. Building on previous work assessing teachers’ attitudes, we focus on how pre-service teacher attitudes vary across different dimensions, and how these patterns can inform teacher training. We present results from assessing attitudes towards stochastics and its teaching for a sample of 269 pre-service Chilean mathematics teachers across three topics: descriptive statistics, probability, and statistical inference. Using a quantitative approach, and considering attitudes towards content and pedagogy, we focus on describing the main attitudinal differences among these three areas. In general, we found positive attitude towards the content and its teaching in all three areas, but with differences among them, primarily in the area of statistical inference. We end with some proposals aimed at improving teacher preparation, focusing on helping pre-service teachers understand the utility and overarching process of statistical investigations.
Through a series of explorations, this article will demonstrate how the Kentucky Derby winning times dataset provides various opportunities for introductory and advanced topics, from data processing ...to model building. Although the final goal may be a prediction interval, the dataset is rich enough for it to appear in several places in an introductory or second course in statistics. After adjusting for the change in track length and track condition, winning speed has an interesting nonlinear trend, with one notable outlier. Student investigations can range from validating the phrase "the most exciting two minutes in sports" to predicting the winning speed of next year's race using parallel polynomial models.
Chronic hepatitis B, a condition associated with severe complications, disproportionately affects Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in the United States. Increasing testing among this population ...is critical for improving health outcomes. This study compares different types of video narratives that use storytelling techniques to an informational video (control), to examine whether narratives are associated with higher hepatitis B beliefs scores and video rating outcomes. A sample of Asian American and Pacific Islander adults (N = 600) completed an online survey where they viewed one of four video conditions, three of which included storytelling techniques and one with informational content. Results indicated that parental stories received significantly higher perceived effectiveness ratings (M = 3.88, SD = 0.61) than the older adult personal stories (M = 3.62, SD = 0.74), F(3, 596) = 3.795, p = .010. Parental stories also had significantly higher perceived severity scores (M = 3.83, SD = 0.69) compared to the young adult stories (M = 3.73, SD = 0.74) and the informational videos (M = 3.83, SD = 0.69), F(3, 596) = 7.72, p < .001. The informational videos (M = 4.10, SD = 0.65) received significantly higher message credibility ratings than the older adult personal stories (M = 3.84, SD = 0.70), F(3, 596) = 4.71, p = .003. Follow-up tests using Bonferroni correction revealed that parental stories (M = 3.98, SD = 0.64) and young adult personal stories (M = 3.934, SD = 0.76) scored significantly higher on speaker ratings than the older adult personal stories (M = 3.698, SD = 0.77). Results suggest that storytelling has the potential for connecting with a specific audience in an emotional way that is perceived well overall. Future research should examine the long-term impact of hepatitis B personal story videos and whether the addition of facts or statistics to videos would improve outcomes.
Recent curriculum development projects emphasize teaching simulation and randomization‐based statistical inference as a prominent feature in introductory statistics courses. We describe the goals, ...distinctive features, and examples from some of these projects. Technology is a key component of these courses, so we mention desirable features of the various technology products used with this approach. We also discuss how student learning is being assessed in such courses, along with how the curriculum effort itself is being evaluated. We also touch on some challenges that we have encountered with teaching these courses, both from a student and a faculty viewpoint. WIREs Comput Stat 2014, 6:211–221. doi: 10.1002/wics.1302
This article is categorized under:
Statistical and Graphical Methods of Data Analysis > Bootstrap and Resampling
Statistical Models > Simulation Models
The recent simulation-based inference (SBI) movement in algebra-based introductory statistics courses (Stat 101) has provided preliminary evidence of improved student conceptual understanding and ...retention. However, little is known about whether these positive effects are preferentially distributed across types of students entering the course. We consider how two metrics of Stat 101 student preparation (precourse performance on concept inventory and math ACT score) may or may not be associated with end of course student performance on conceptual inventories. Students across all preparation levels tended to show improvement in Stat 101, but more improvement was observed across all student preparation levels in early versions of a SBI course. Furthermore, students' gains tended to be similar regardless of whether students entered the course with more preparation or less. Recent data on a sample of students using a current version of an SBI course showed similar results, though direct comparison with non-SBI students was not possible. Overall, our analysis provides additional evidence that SBI curricula are effective at improving students' conceptual understanding of statistical ideas postcourse regardless student preparation. Further work is needed to better understand nuances of student improvement based on other student demographics, prior coursework as well as instructor and institutional variables.
Although much attention has been paid to issues around student assessment, for most introductory statistics courses few changes have taken place in the ways students are assessed. The assessment ...literature describes three foundational elements-cognition, observation, and interpretation-that comprise an "assessment triangle" underlying all assessments. However, most instructors focus primarily on the second component: tasks that are used to produce grades. This article focuses on three sections written by leading statistics educators who describe some innovative and even provocative approaches to rethinking student assessment in statistics classes.
While many instructors are aware of the Literary Digest 1936 poll as an example of biased sampling methods, this article details potential further explorations for the Digest’s 1924-1936 quadrennial ...U.S. presidential election polls. Potential activities range from lessons in data acquisition, cleaning, and validation, to basic data literacy and visualization skills, to exploring one or more methods of adjustment to account for bias based on information collected at that time. Students can also compare how those methods would have performed. One option could be to give introductory students a first look at the idea of “sampling adjustment” and how this principle can be used to account for difficulties in modern polling, but the context is rich in other opportunities that can be discussed at various times in the course or in more advanced sampling courses.
The 2000 ASA Guidelines for Undergraduate Statistics majors aimed to provide guidance to programs with undergraduate degrees in statistics as to the content and skills that statistics majors should ...be learning. The 2014 Guidelines revise the earlier guidelines to reflect changes in the discipline. As programs strive to adjust their curricula to align with the 2014 Guidelines, it is appropriate to also think about developing an assessment cycle of evaluation. This will enable programs to determine whether students are learning what we want them to learn and to work on continuously improving the program over time. The first step is to translate the broader Guidelines into institution-specific measurable learning outcomes. This article focuses on providing examples of learning outcomes developed by different institutions based on the 2000 Guidelines. The companion article by Moore and Kaplan (this issue) focuses on choosing appropriate assessment methods and rubrics and creating an assessment plan. We hope the examples provided are illustrative and that they will assist programs as they implement the 2014 Guidelines.
Received November 2014. Revised July 2015.