Contributed Paper C120
In session C4A (Tuesday 10th, 11:00-12:30, Level 3 - Conference Room B)Graduate Students Teaching Statistics: Their Experiences In Community and Beliefs About Teaching
Presenter
Nicola Justice (United States)Abstract
Graduate students teach and assist the teaching of statistics courses at post-secondary institutions across the world. The dependence on graduate students (henceforth graduate teaching assistants, or GTAs) for teaching, along with the potential for GTAs to become professors, raises questions about how GTAs learn to teach statistics, and how their beliefs about teaching may change. This paper describes the development, administration, and results of a survey designed to explore graduate students’ beliefs about teaching statistics and their experiences learning in their statistics-teaching communities. The survey results (based on n=174 GTAs) suggest that GTAs’ beliefs about teaching can change to become more student-centered. The relationship between beliefs and their experiences in community is less clear.