Abstract
Attitudes toward statistics play an important role in statistical understanding, postsecondary decisions, and a lifelong relationship with statistics. Unfortunately, the average undergraduate student tends to view statistics as less interesting and less valuable after completing an introductory statistics course. The product of several decades of statistics education reform, a statistical reasoning learning environment (SRLE) has shown some positive early results in cognitive domains and may impact attitudes as well. In this study, four classes of introductory undergraduate statistics (two fully online, two face-to-face) were designed as SRLEs. Students (n = 83) completed a pretest and posttest version of the Survey of Attitudes Toward Statistics-36©. Both online and face-to-face sections showed average gains in Interest and Value that were higher than those reported in a large reference group, and these gains were practically significant.
Highlights
Undergraduate statistics courses for non-majors are an odd creature
In response to what they saw as an overemphasis on computation and a lack of statistical reasoning, and partly due to the way in which John Tukey‘s exploratory style of data analysis supplanted the need for probability-centered statistics (Carver et al, 2016), statistics educators began calling for reformation in the final decades of the 20th century
After learning introductory statistics within a statistical reasoning learning environment, students were more likely to view statistics as interesting and valuable than what is typically found in undergraduate introductory statistics classrooms
Summary
Undergraduate statistics courses for non-majors are an odd creature. First, consider the potential of the content itself. Showalter / Journal of Pedagogical Research, 5(2), 1-18 negative affect towards it (Murtonen & Lehtinen, 2003) by the time they finish an introductory course. These negative attitudinal outcomes have been linked to lower achievement (Emmioğlu & Capa-Aydin, 2012; Tishkovskaya & Lancaster, 2012) and a damaged lifelong relationship with statistics (Leavy et al, 2013; Ramirez et al, 2012; Sowey, 2020). A promising approach to undergraduate statistics education was implemented in four class sections of introductory statistics This approach, known as a statistics reasoning learning environment (SRLE), has shown potential to counter the national trends of negative attitudinal outcomes. A validated instrument was used to assess the change in students‘ attitudes towards statistics from the beginning to the end of the SRLE
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