This study aimed to gain knowledge of students' beliefs and difficulties in understanding p-values, and to use this knowledge to develop improved teaching programs. This study took place over four consecutive teaching semesters of a one-semester tertiary statistics unit. The study was cyclical, in that the results of each semester were used…

This study explored threshold concepts and areas of troublesome knowledge among students enrolled in a basic biostatistics course at the university level. The main area of troublesome knowledge among students was targeted by using technology to improve student learning. A total of 102 undergraduate students who responded to structured…

This paper aims to contribute to the emerging literature on capacity-building in statistics education by examining issues pertaining to the readiness of teachers in a developing country to teach basic statistical topics. The paper reflects on challenges and barriers to building statistics capacity at grass-roots level in a developing country,…

This study presents the results of the analysis of a group of teacher-made test questions for statistics courses at the university level. Teachers were asked to submit tests they had used in their previous two semesters. Ninety-seven tests containing 978 questions were gathered and classified according to the SOLO taxonomy (Biggs & Collis,…

In this paper, we report on the impact of four activities and two interviews on the organization of an introductory statistics course attended by future mathematics teachers at the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil. The activities were designed to enhance students' learning and collaborative knowledge construction, based on Vygotsky's…

This paper presents a comparative analysis of statistics education research in Malaysia and the Philippines by modes of dissemination, research areas, and trends. An electronic search for published research papers in the area of statistics education from 2000-2012 yielded 20 for Malaysia and 19 for the Philippines. Analysis of these papers showed…

Although we use statistical notions daily in making decisions, research in statistics education has focused mostly on formal statistics. Further, everyday culture may influence informal ideas of statistics. Yet, there appears to be minimal literature that deals with the educational implications of the role of culture. This paper will discuss the…

"SERJ" has provided a high quality professional publication venue for researchers in statistics education for close to a decade. This paper presents a review of the articles published to explore what they suggest about the field of statistics education, the researchers, the questions addressed, and the growing knowledge base on teaching and…

Qualitative methods have become common in statistics education research, but questions linger about their role in scholarship. Currently, influential policy documents lend credence to the notion that qualitative methods are inherently inferior to quantitative ones. In this paper, several of the questions about qualitative research raised in recent…

Our research in statistical cognition uses both qualitative and quantitative methods. A mixed method approach makes our research more comprehensive, and provides us with new directions, unexpected insights, and alternative explanations for previously established concepts. In this paper, we review four statistical cognition studies that used mixed…

Statistics education in psychology often falls disappointingly short of its goals. The increasing use of qualitative approaches in statistics education research has extended and enriched our understanding of statistical cognition processes, and thus facilitated improvements in statistical education and practices. Yet conceptual analysis, a…

This paper reviews factors that contribute to the development of middle school students' interest in statistical literacy and its motivational influence on learning. To date very little research has specifically examined the influence of positive affect such as interest on learning in the middle-school statistics context. Two bodies of associated…

This paper starts from the premise that teachers' discourse communities influence how ideas for reform are implemented. In order to understand some of the discourse surrounding the reforms proposed by GAISE, an online focus group activity was conducted. The focus group consisted of pre-service and practicing teachers responsible for teaching…

Informal inferential reasoning is a relatively recent concept in the research literature. Several research studies have defined this type of cognitive process in slightly different ways. In this paper, a working definition of informal inferential reasoning based on an analysis of the key aspects of statistical inference, and on research from…

We investigate the use of external visual representations in probability problem solving. Twenty-six students enrolled in an introductory statistics course for social sciences graduate students (post-baccalaureate) solved eight probability problems in a structured interview format. Results show that students spontaneously use self-generated…