STATISTICAL LITERACY OF EDUCATION POLICY MAKERS: A PLS SEM APPROACH

Abstract

In this new era drenched with data, statistical literacy becomes more essential for individuals to be able to read, communicate, and make informed decisions. Moreover, statistical literacy is highly essential for education policy makers who are highly accountable for all policy outcomes including school improvement, resource allocation, curriculum planning and intervention. Hence, there is a need to understand their perceptions and beliefs. The aim of this study is to explore whether attitude towards statistics and statistical anxiety are related to the education policy makers’ statistical literacy. Considering that statistics coursework is the basis and major contributor to a statistically literate society, real problems with statistics are likely due to non-cognitive factors, which include attitudes or beliefs towards statistics. There is a global increase in literature exploring beliefs and attitudes of teachers towards statistics, indicating that studies on attitudes towards statistics do not stop at the students’ level but should also be extended to education personnel who uses statistics in their workplace. While pre-service teachers in college claimed that statistics anxiety is the main obstacle to get their teaching degree. This is alarming as they are the future teachers and education policy makers with anxiety may develop avoidance to read educational diagnoses containing statistical information. Participants self-reported their statistical literacy with 20 multiple choice items tailor made to the work of education policy makers. Data were drawn from a survey elicited using a cross-sectional method on 328 education personnel working at different levels in Ministry of Education. The findings show that attitude towards statistics is not significantly related to statistical literacy while statistics anxiety has a significant negative relationship with statistical literacy. Statistical anxiety also has a negative significant relationship with attitudes towards statistics. These findings help strengthen Model of Statistical Literacy, where dispositional element including beliefs and attitude was addressed while confirming Anxiety Expectation Model. Future studies to explore other potential predictors of statistical literacy and suggested to investigate possible difference in attitude towards statistics between adult workers and students.