Identifying Statistical Concepts Associated with High and Low Self-Efficacy to Teach Statistics: Using the Sets Instrument with Pre-Service Middle-Grades Teachers

• Activity Number: 135
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Monday, August 5, 2013 : 8:30 AM to 10:20 AM
• Sponsor: Section on Statistical Education
• Author(s): Leigh Harrell-Williams*+ and M. Alejandra Sorto and Rebecca Pierce and T. J. Murphy and Lawrence M. Lesser
• Companies: Georgia State University and Texas State University and Ball State University and Northern Kentucky University and The University of Texas at El Paso
• Keywords: self-efficacy to teach statistics ; SETS instrument ; GAISE ; Common Core State Standards for Mathematics ; pre-service teachers ; middle grades

Abstract

Previous mathematics/science education research shows that teacher knowledge and beliefs affect their effectiveness in a classroom. Therefore, we developed the middle grades and high school Self-Efficacy to Teach Statistics (SETS) instruments, based on statistical concepts in national and state guidelines, such as the GAISE Pre-K-12 Report and the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics. The middle grades SETS instrument measures pre-service teachers' self-efficacy to teach topics at GAISE levels A and B as well as K-8 CCSSM statistics topics. The items on both SETS instruments ask teachers to rate their self-efficacy to teach a particular concept on a scale of 1("not confident at all") to 6("completely confident"). Data was collected at multiple public institutions of higher education in the US. We will discuss results of item difficulty rankings obtained by a multidimensional Rasch analysis of items on the two subscales of the middle school SETS instrument, 'Reading the Data' and 'Reading Between the Data'. Such knowledge regarding pre-service teacher perceptions of difficulty is needed to improving pre-service teachers' experiences with these particular statistical topics.