Page 312 - Invited Paper Session (IPS) - Volume 2

IPS249 Terán, Teresita
3. Conclusion
It is undoubtable that the twentieth century has been the century of
Statistics, which has come to be considered as one of the fundamental
methodological sciences and a base of the experimental scientific method.
Teaching statistics, however, does not seem to follow the same path, even
though Batanero highlights that in the last decade there has been a particular
increase of the use of statistical ideas in different disciplines. This can be
observed in scientific magazines and in the increasing implication of
statisticians in the interdisciplinary work teams and in many cases misapplied.
We think that this indicates the existence of an educational problematic that
has its roots in the incorporation of statistics from school. This is not yet a fact.
Even though statistics is included in Primary and Secondary Education
syllabuses, teachers generally leave this topic for the end of the programme
and many times it is overlooked. Students reach university without the basic
knowledge and it is necessary to start the year repeating the contents of
descriptive statistics and calculation of probabilities that should have been
acquired at school.
University teachers, who should try to reach statistical inference – at least
at the beginning- since this is the topic that will be most helpful for students,
should speed up their explanations, suppress practical activities, and a big part
of demonstrations or reasoning that could lead to the students´ better
understanding of the methodology of statistics. The students cannot
assimilate the content in such a limited period of time and only achieve
learning content by heart which will be unable to apply later on in their
professional life. All these nuisances are worsen by the big number of students
in the classrooms and the lack of resources (like IT labs or teacher assistants)
which would allow a more personalized attention and a way of teaching more
directed to statistics itself. It is not surprising that students are demotivated
and that statistics becomes one of the less popular subjects for students. It is
evident that teachers –at different educational levels- should accept the fact
that fast technological changes make new forms of teaching and learning
foreseeable, and that we should be involved in them if we want to guide
statistical education and create a real statistical culture in society.

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