This paper is from Session 4F: Teachers, their questions, and their interpretations
which comes under Topic 4: Improving teaching and capacity in statistics education
Paper 4F3 (Tuesday 10th, 11:00-12:30)
College Instructors’ Attitudes toward Confidence Intervals
Presenter
- Hyung Won Kim (University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, United States)
Co-authors
- Aaron Wilon (University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, United States)
- Ho Kyoung Ko (Ajou University, South Korea)
Abstract
This study explores college statistics instructors’ attitudes toward teaching confidence intervals (CIs) in elementary statistics courses and using them for inferential statistics. An instrument was developed using a taxonomical construct that classifies instructors’ attitudes into three previously established pedagogical components: affective, cognitive and behavioral. Data were collected from 270 college instructors, who were grouped by gender, academic background and statistics teaching experience. The study analyzes the participants’ responses across these groupings to investigate attitudes toward CIs themselves, CIs in terms of the three pedagogical components, and CIs compared to p-values and CIs compared between general and teaching contexts. The results indicate the three groupings are moderate to strong predictors of attitudes toward CIs. Different instructor groups showed significant differences in attitudes for the behavioral component.