Chapter 24: Teaching Introductory Statistics: Incorporating Motivational Principles

Educational statistics is a subject that students in educational psychology and other education disciplines do not typically look forward to taking. They may have heard that the subject is difficult, irrelevant, or the courses are taught in ways that are confusing to them. They may have anxiety about mathematical subjects or, more specifically, about statistics. Over the course of 11 collective years of teaching introductory statistics in educational psychology, we have introduced a number of features to educational statistics courses that are built on principles from research in academic achievement motivation. These course features are designed to help students see the relevance of introductory statistics, feel capable of handling the tasks in the course, and lessen their anxiety about reading and using statistics in educational research.