Joan B. Garfield Psychological foundations: quantitative methods in education Ph.D., University of Minnesota Office: 178 Education Sciences Building Tel: 612-625-0337 E-mail: jbg@umn.edu

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A personal statement about teaching

As long as I can remember, I have wanted to be a teacher. As an undergraduate majoring in elementary education in the early 1970's I was inspired by books on alternative approaches to education: Summerhill, The Lives of Children, and Freedom to Learn. I wanted to be the kind of teacher who made learning exciting, who understood her students and their lives, and who created innovative learning environments.

During my first year in college, in 1968, my roommate and a few other friends in my dorm signed up to take their first statistics class. Although I was not required to take the course, I had always liked mathematics and observed with interest their experience in this course. They hated it. They described long, boring calculations and tedious lectures by an uninspired professor. Although "A" students in other courses, my friends received C's and D's in this class. That was my first introduction to statistics. I decided to avoid taking the course and did.

Many years later, as a new graduate student, I enrolled (with trepidation) in my first statistics course, a requirement for my program in Mathematics Education. Remembering my friends' suffering, I worried about how I would survive this course. On the first day of class, the instructor welcomed us to the course and proceeded to teach a course that must have been entirely different than the one my roommate suffered through. He tried to make the material alive and relevant, divided us into study and work groups, and always conveyed the attitude that he loved the material and loved teaching our class. What I learned in this course was that statistics is a fascinating subject. It made sense to me and I found that I was better able to understand quantitative information in the world around me. I soon enrolled in a second statistics course and later applied for a transfer to Educational Psychology so that I could pursue my study of applied statistics.

Having received undergraduate and graduate degrees in education, I welcomed an opportunity to teach mathematics and introductory statistics courses in the General College while working on my doctoral program. As the students filed into my first statistics class, I could tell that they were bringing to class some of the same fears and anxieties that I had witnessed and experienced myself. I was determined to help them to feel that statistics is relevant and important to learn, necessary in their lives, and that they were fully capable of succeeding in the course.

This approach seemed to work. We struggled through some of the difficult topics (like probability), and I made changes in my explanations and plans many times. Several students came for help during my office hours, and I enjoyed working with these students on a one-to-one basis. I learned more about who they were and felt wonderful when I was able to help them understand a concept and could tell that the material made sense to them. Most students in my class appeared to learn statistics without feeling boredom or pain. I discovered that I loved teaching statistics, and felt tremendously rewarded by transforming these students' fears and anxieties about the course into positive attitudes and self confidence.

Since that first class I taught in 1978, I continue to love teaching statistics and feel that I have a mission in life: to dispel the terrible myths that people have created about statistics courses. I have not yet met an adult who, when finding out my line of work, does not tell me that statistics was the worst course they had and that they did poorly in it. Some refer to the "sadistics" course they suffered through. I firmly believe that anyone can learn statistics and feel confident about their experience, regardless of their mathematics background.

I view my job as creating and teaching statistics courses that will engage students and motivate them to learn, provide opportunities for them to apply their learning in real problem contexts, and provide feedback to them to improve their learning. In order to do this, I need to get to know my students as individuals so that I can help each one learn to their best potential and show them that I care about their learning experience

Over the years I have experimented with using different textbooks, teaching techniques, computer programs, and selections of topics. Implementing the model of "classroom research", I gather quantitative and qualitative information from my students in order to evaluate the different instructional methods and materials I have tried. This ongoing experimentation has led me to a method of teaching statistics that seems to successfully engage students in hands-on activities and cooperative learning experiences.

My method of teaching statistics is based on the philosophy that the way to learn statistics is to do statistics, and that students should be actively engaged in the learning process. Instead of having students come to class and passively watch me "do statistics" in front of them, I have the students "do statistics" during every class. This hands-on approach begins on the first day of class when students learn how to do some basic data gathering and analysis techniques by generating data about themselves.

To inform and improve my teaching I look to the psychological research literature for information on certain misconceptions statistics students have regarding chance events, and to articles in statistics journals on effective educational approaches. Beyond these fields I read the "teacher improvement" literature in higher education for overall strategies such as using journal writing, cooperative groups, and alternative assessment procedures. Because I have gathered such a large collection of books and articles relevant to the teaching and learning of statistics, I was funded by the National Center for Research in Mathematical Sciences Education to develop a computerized database of my research collection (STAT FILE).

Although I turned out to be a very different teacher than the one I dreamed about becoming as a child and as a young adult, the models of teaching that inspired me in the 1970's are still a part of the teacher that I became. I love being a teacher, working with and getting to know the students in my classes, and most of all, helping students discover the beauty, relevance, and importance of statistics.

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