Improving Teachers’ Professional Statistical Literacy

Abstract

Given the deluge of data that school principals and teachers receive as a result of student assessment, it has become essential for them to have statistical literacy skills and understanding. Earlier work with primary and secondary teachers in Victoria revealed that, although most saw school statistical reports as valuable for planning and thought that they could adequately interpret them, their confidence was often not well founded, with some fundamental misconceptions evident in their statistical understanding. Based on these results, a workshop was developed to target key aspects of statistical literacy particularly relevant to the education context. The workshop incorporated simple hands-on activities to develop understanding of box plot representations, critiquing descriptions of distributions and applying the newly learned principles to participants’ own school reports. Although principals and teachers responded favourably to the activities, delayed post-testing indicated limited retention of the relevant aspects of statistical literacy. These results suggest that when teachers are dealing with data on only one or two occasions in a year, it may be important to provide timely and efficient access to reminders of basic concepts.