Abstract:

This paper focuses on developing statistical literacy (SL) in higher education within the Initial Language Teacher Training program for undergraduate students (ILTT) across two state universities in Chile. A pre-post methodology was designed to assess the students' perception regarding the relevance of SL in the ILTT program and, at the same time, the importance of SL in their future professional careers. 25 ILTT participants (the experimental group which does not include SL as a part of their curriculum) and 25 students from the Initial Mathematics Teacher Training program (the control group that includes SL in their curriculum) responded to a pre-Likert scale questionnaire, followed by an SL workshop focused on quantitative methodology and data analysis using R programming language. At the end of the workshop, participants answered the same Likert scale instrument.

The results within the experimental group showed that students' perception regarding the relevance of SL in the ILTT and the importance of SL in their future professional careers increased in the post (M 0.69, SD= 0.46) compared to the prequestionnaire (M 0.37, SD =0.48). In addition, a t-test was run to compare the means by group. The outcomes demonstrated that differences were non-statistically significant across groups (t = -11.741, df = 185.93, p-value = 1.2). The results suggest that future language teachers consider SL a relevant tool in the current program. In addition, we can infer that participants consider SL development necessary in their future classroom performance. Furthermore, the means comparison between groups reveals that SL's perception does not vary according to the discipline (language and mathematics). Finally, we proposed that the development of statistical literacy should be included across initial training teacher programs, regardless of the subject area, to enable future teachers to understand, organize, and socialize the data competently.

Keywords:

Statistical Literacy, Initial Teacher Training Program, higher education.