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MODELLING STUDENTS' LEARNING OF INTRODUCTORY STATISTICS

In this exploratory study, we followed approximately 1000 students (Economics and Business) in their freshman year at the University of Maastricht (Netherlands). Those students attended three compulsory courses in Quantitative Methods, each having an important component of statistics. Our population of students exhibits a strong heterogeneity with respect to several aspects: attitude towards and prior knowledge of mathematics and statistics, nationality, type of prior education and the mastery of languages. To study the impact of this heterogeneity on learning introductory statistics, the development of a model of students’ learning of introductory statistics was chosen as the goal of the project. In order to develop a relational model, several surveys were taken and data sources were used with regard to the students’ characteristics, learning context, students’ perceptions and the approaches students took. The major contribution of this study is the broad range of different determinants of learning that is considered, which allows investigation of the interrelation between several factors influencing learning besides studying the direct impact of each factor on learning.