Abstract
Although Statistics is not a very popular course according to most students, a majority of students still take it, as it is mandatory at most Social Science departments. Therefore it takes special teacher’s skills to teach statistics. In order to do so it is essential for teachers to know what
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students’ attitudes are and what factors influence course outcomes. In this study an answer was sought to the question what the effect is of educational and student factors on course outcomes with respect to introductory courses Statistics at Dutch and Flemish institutions of higher education. The theoretical model for this study was built around the Expectancy Value model that explains achievement related choices. In this model achievement behavior is looked upon as a function of student expectations, motivation, beliefs, goals and the task value. A student will choose the best possible combination in order to obtain the expected success (i.e. pass the course). Motivations and beliefs are influenced by individual factors, such as self confidence and previous experience and by educational factors such as course-organization. In a large-scale field experiment, I collected pretest- and posttest attitude-data of 2,555 students at 11 institutions. For this purpose I used the ‘Survey of Attitudes toward Statistics’, developed by Schau. Additionally a number of expert-interviews were conducted. Besides answering the question above, I tested some innovative statistical tools, i.e. Latent Change Method Effect Models. They analyze true intra-individual change and filter out method effects that are due to differences in the set-up of the field experiment. Additionally, so-called ‘Propensity Related Covariates’ were developed. These covariates contain the combined effect of individual or institutional factors on statistics-attitudes and, in turn, on student achievement. Generally, attitudes toward statistics can be split up into six components: Affect, Cognitive Competency, Difficulty, Value, Interest and Effort. The results of this study show that attitudes on average are located in the top half of the attitude scale, with the exception of Difficulty. They do change over the semester, but only mildly and not always in the direction the teacher would want. Although students perceive a positive change in their competencies throughout the semester, they still find the course equally difficult. Effort has a special position among the six components as it describes the individual behavior in order to pass the course, contrary to the other components where the student evaluates the course in a more passive way. Additionally, not so much organizational but individual factors affect attitudes towards statistics and student achievement. These factors are self confidence, mathematics experience, gender and age. Therefore this thesis concludes with a number of recommendations for teachers to develop and organize their course and motivate their students. Lastly, future research should concentrate on ‘teacher quality’ a bit more, as this concept remained underexposed in this study. The most important message that I want to transmit is that highly motivated teachers can motivate their students and as a result student achievement will be high irrespective of the topic.
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