Statistics Teaching Community of Practice: Combating “Statistics Anxiety”

You are warmly invited to the launch event for our new Community of Practice for teachers of statistics in the UCL Faculty of Social & Historical Sciences, convened by the Social Data Institute. This will be a forum to share ideas about teaching quantitative methods in the social sciences and humanities, meeting at least once per term.

In this first seminar we’ll be discussing ‘statistics anxiety’ amongst students. Most teachers of statistics will be familiar with students who find these courses overwhelming or alienating. We’ll ask: why do some students feel anxious, afraid or panicky when confronted with statistics? How can we design modules to help students who find statistics education stressful? The Social Data Institute’s new Lecturer in Social Data Science, Dr. Igor Tkalec, will give a presentation on statistics anxiety and research-based methods to help students overcome it, including his own original research on teaching introductory statistics to United Nations diplomats. After the talk there will be ample time for discussion about the implications for our teaching practice.

This session should be of interest to anyone teaching statistics across the Faculty. It will provide practical advice and tools to make our teaching more accessible and rewarding for students from a wide range of backgrounds.