EPSY 8271—Statistics Education Research Seminar: Studies on Teaching and Learning Statistics

Offered: spring semesters
Wednesdays, 4:40 – 7:20 p.m.
3 credits
Instructor: Joan Garfield
Professor of Educational Psychology
Morse-Alumni Distinguished Teaching Professor of Statistics
612-625-0337, jbg@umn.edu

Required text and readings

Readings will be taken from the following books as well as from many different journals and other publications:

Judgment UnderUncertainty: Heuristics and Biases. Kahneman, D., Slovic, P., and Tversky, A. (eds.) (1982). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

The Challenge of Developing Statistical Reasoning, Literacy and Thinking. Edited by Dani Ben-Zvi and Joan Garfield. Kluwer Publishers.

Other assigned readings will be online or on reserve at the library.

Supplementary texts

Reflections on Statistics: Learning, Teaching, and Assessment in Grades K12. Edited by Susanne P. Lajoie. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum (1998).

Course objectives

Students will become knowledgeable about the research literature related to teaching and related to teaching and learning statistics. This literature spans several disciplines (e.g., psychology, mathematics education, and statistics) and is now being used to form a unique discipline of statistics education. Students will read both classic and current research, become knowledgeable about who the key contributors to the research are, and the diverse types of research methods used in the different disciplines. Students will write reflection papers based on their critical reviews of the research literature, will conduct a focused literature review on a particular topic, will formulate a research question, and plan a study based on appropriate research methods.

Conceptual outline/topics

• Overview of research in statistics education (Garfield and Ahlgren, Shaughness, Shaughnessy et al.)

• Foundations: early research on children’s intuitions about probability (Piaget, Fischbein)

• Pioneering work in social psychology: Judgments under uncertainty, misconceptions and faulty heuristics (Kahneman, Slovic, Tversky and Colleagues)

• Cognitive psychology: training studies to develop correct reasoning (Nisbett and colleagues)

• Cognitive psychology ; Identifying new misconceptions regarding probability (Konold, Lecoutre)

• Mathematics education: studying the learning and teaching of data analysis and probability in grades k-12 (Lajoie, Russell, Mokros, Rubin)

• Mathematics education: studying the statistical understanding of k-12 teachers (Rubin, Heaton and Mickelson)

• Statistics education: studies of college students, classroom based research (delMas et al, Holcomb, Magel)

• Research: developing models of statistical reasoning and thinking *(Jones et al, Pfannkuch and Wild)

• Research on the impact of technology on learning statistics (Biehler, Ben Zvi, delMas et al, Konold, Cobb.)

• Studies focused on developing ideas of center and variability, and comparing groups (Mokros et al, Konold et al, Reading, Shaughnessy)

• Studies focused on developing ideas of samples, sampling, and sampling distributions (Watson, delMas at al,., Chance et al)

• Studies focused on ideas of association and covariation (Moritz, Batanero)

• Studies focused on understanding probability and inference (Borovcnik and Peard, Falk, Konold, Batanero.)

• Focus on Research methods across the disciplines that explore teaching and learning statistics: quantitative and qualitative approaches, lab studies and classroom research

• Future directions: what research is needed, what questions need to be explored.

Student assignments

Students will be required to complete the following assignments:

• four reflection papers on the readings,

• one paper that reviews and critiques the research related to a particular topic, and

• one proposal for a research study based on the literature review.

Revised August 2003