Desarrollo del razonamiento estadístico en estudiantes de enfermería

Abstract

This paper presents an educational experience for the development of statistical reasoning of nursing undergraduates and their assimilation of the resources and skills to be acquired by this profession. The educational activity is based on assessment, using specific tests to evaluate statistical reasoning taken as the way in which students sort and combine ideas and concepts coherently, in order to understand, interpret and give sense to statistical information. When designing this paper, a constructivist approach to the teaching of statistics has been taken into consideration and the application of theoretical principles to achieve meaningful learning. The research includes a review of tools used in the evaluation of statistical reasoning by students of introductory courses in statistics, on the basis of which a new questionnaire has been developed and adapted to the context of health sciences and to the statistical content of the curricula of a Nursing degree. The creation of tools, as well as the methodological options on which we have based the teaching of statistics to students who make up the sample of this work, the guidelines for the teaching and assessment of statistics that were formulated by the American Statistical Association (ASA) in their report `Guidelines for Assessment and Instruction in Statistics Education (GAISE 2010)¿ have been taken into consideration. The empirical objective of this thesis was to determine the significant increase in the conceptual understanding of statistics in a group of nursing students, when an evaluation system using specific tools that measure statistical reasoning is applied. This is quasi experimental research in education, which measures the effectiveness of the intervention with a pretest/posttest design with a non-equivalent control group. The results conclude that the conceptual understanding of statistics and the academic performance of students increases when, in the process of teaching and learning this subject, an evaluation strategy designed to develop statistical reasoning is used. Statistical reasoning is the cornerstone of the teaching of statistics and the role of the teacher should be to help to develop this skill in the students.