Topic 5

Statistics education in the workplace, government and across disciplines

Convenors

• John Harraway (New Zealand)
• Sharleen Forbes (New Zealand)
• Diana Kohan (Argentina)
• Mauren Porciúncula (Brazil)

Abstract

Topic 5 investigates problems of statistics teachers and identifies new approaches by teachers to empowering and educating today's learners in statistics. Learners range from school students, to university students, and to people being trained in the workforce for different roles in society.

At all levels teacher development and good teaching practices will be discussed. The interface between school and university curricula and problems associated with the role of mathematics in statistics teaching at the expense of statistical literacy will be reviewed taking account of the objective of any statistics training programme, whether it be theoretical or applied.

Studies applying statistics are motivational aids for teaching if they report to real data, and are part of contexts of interest to students. Issues like Covid, the environment, refugee crises, sustainability principles, vaccination, and cancer diagnosis for example compliment teaching. It is difficult for the statistics teacher to locate such material unless the teacher has easy access to research colleagues. But there are helpful sources of relevant studies. IBGEeduca is the portal of the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics focused on education with updated and playful content for children and teachers. There is also LeME, Statistical Literacy Project, Best Cooperative Award 2019, which encourages students to research on topics of their own interests.

For older learners videos presented by researchers can help and are freely available for teachers in the resources section on the International Statistics Literacy Project web site together with interactive official statistics web apps. Experiences with case studies in the videos, associated lessons for teaching and other applications will be identified and discussed.

For older learners there are resources available as well. As well as IBGEeduca, the Indian Statistics Institute provides courses for training statisticians working in governments in developing countries. Also the United Nations Institute for Training and Research in Geneva has developed on-line courses targeted at measuring progress towards the UN’s Sustainable Development Indicators. There is AtivEstat - Statistics Activities. A portal intended to be a facilitator for the teacher to illustrate their Statistics topic classes with discussion and verification of concepts. These and other initiatives will be discussed.

Papers that address these and other perspectives of statistics education in the workplace, government and across disciplines are welcome.