This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: A new study has investigated whether challenges faced by educators in teaching statistics could be reduced by changing how it is taught. The findings suggest there is no single "right way," giving educators flexibility to choose how best to teach the subject.
Students studying subjects ranging from psychology and medicine to law are often required to learn statistics, but many find the subject challenging. Two common difficulties are understanding statistical concepts and experiencing anxiety about statistics. Experts from the School of Psychology at the University of Nottingham have published a new study in Psychology Teaching Review that explored these challenges and whether changing the order in which people encounter equations and worked examples, and the type of example used, affected their learning.
The findings suggest that the order and example type did not affect either understanding of statistics or anxiety. This means educators may have considerable flexibility in deciding how to introduce statistical concepts such as standard deviation. "We performed this study to find out whether changing the order of teaching materials and the examples used would reduce statistics anxiety and improve understanding.
Neither order nor example type affected these outcomes. This is good news, because it means that both orders and example types are equally effective, and educators can choose without worrying that it will negatively affect students' experience or grades," said Dr. Kieran Lyon of the School of Psychology, the study's lead author.
Statistics is often introduced through lectures that present abstract equations before students practice applying them to example data. The researchers investigated whether putting the worked example first, or changing the example type, could make statistics easier to understand and less anxiety-provoking. The researchers conducted an online experiment focused on standard deviation, a measure of how spread out numbers are around their average.
Participants learned the equation for standard deviation and completed a worked example involving calculating the standard deviation of a set of numbers using Microsoft Excel. The study tested two different teaching orders: equation-first, where participants learned the equation before completing the worked example; and example-first, where participants completed the worked example before learning the equation. The researchers also compared two types of worked examples.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
