No abstract

No abstract

Assessing students’ ability in learning statistics has been a challenge for many statistical educators. To be able to know exactly how well students have learned and mastered the statistical contents can be difficult without the use of proper measurement tools. Even though types of assessment of students learning differ from one instructor to another, however common method of assessment based on the overall raw scores of student performance is still being employed. However, the drawback of the conventional assessment based on summated raw scores is that it does not tell us specifically which part of the statistical concepts that student understand the most or the least. Hence, the motivation of this study is to find an alternative approach to measure students’ ability in learning statistical contents based on the Rasch Polytomous measurement model. The main objective is to assess individual student ability in learning statistics based on the computation of probability values of the measurement model. The learning assessment are measured based on the students’ actual learning ability on their final examination scores. Students’ ability in answering correctly their final examination questions given the ability of the students and difficulty of the questions varies at different levels of probability values.

Teachers with a positive attitude towards statistics and good statistical knowledge are important in preparing students to learn statistics effectively. This study explores 49 mathematics teachers’ attitude and knowledge in teaching statistics at selected secondary schools in Selangor. Forty- nine mathematics teachers from the urban and rural secondary schools were surveyed using the attitude toward statistics questionnaire and statistics assessment form. Data collected was subjected to an analysis based on the Rasch measurement model. Wright map shows that slightly over 50% of the teachers with positive attitude towards statistics perceived well in their knowledge in teaching certain statistical concepts. Differential item functioning indicates no significance difference in the attitude of teachers between rural and urban schools. Teachers with less than 10 years experience have better knowledge in graph representation and measures of central tendency while teachers with more than 10 years have better knowledge in measures of dispersion and probability.