This is a session of Topic 4: Statistics education at the post-secondary level

Exchanging pedagogy between post-secondary and secondary school statistics courses

Organizer

• Luke Miratrix (United States) : Session chair

Abstract

Secondary-school statistics, particularly due to the AP Statistics exam, has been refined and thought about fairly extensively. Indeed, some of the more commonly used textbooks, e.g., Yates, Moore and Starnes, and Moore and McCabe, have both secondary and post-secondary versions. The manner of teaching at the post-secondary and secondary levels is, however, generally different. Secondary school classrooms tend to be smaller than college-level introductory statistics courses, and thus could be viewed as incubators for different pedagogical tools, techniques, and philosophies for communicating the deep conceptual issues behind intro statistics. For example, secondary level statistics often has more face-time with students, allowing for more in-class labs and demonstrations. Similarly, the resources and freedom of college-level courses, which are not wedded to the AP curriculum, could provide alternate views on what subject matter should be taught, and how. For example, some college-level courses are very data-driven, and depart from “classic” curricula and instead use state of the art statistical software to analyze large data sets. And now, beyond these two areas of education, we have massive open online courses (MOOCs) such as from EdX that are making intro statistics available in a different mode to both these audiences, and other populations besides. One might imagine that these endeavors could potentially inform pedagogical practice, or offer valuable supplementary materials that could be incorporated at both levels. This session would begin this cross-secondary dialogue in the context of these modern developments in educational practice.

Papers