Disciplinary appropriation at the beginning of a statistics major

Authors

  • Florian Berens University of Tübingen
  • Kelly Findley University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  • Nicola Justice Pacific Lutheran University
  • Christopher Kinson University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.52041/iase2023.408

Abstract

Demand for skillsets in data analysis and computing has been rising quickly in recent years, but academic programs that prepare students for these positions still struggle with retention issues. In addition, statistics graduates are not representative of all parts of society, with women and people of color, among others, being underrepresented. We therefore look at those who enter a statistics major to understand how they navigate their program and find belonging. For the analysis of incoming undergraduates, we are guided by Levrini et al. (2015), who propose to look at identity development through the lens of disciplinary appropriation. Using the example of three students, we show that the operationalization developed by Levrini et al. (2015) is suitable for examining disciplinary appropriation at the beginning of studies. We present the operationalization and discuss how we made it usable in a domain- and target group-specific way.

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Published

2024-03-29

Conference Proceedings Volume

Section

Topic 4: Promoting Inclusion in Statistics and Data Science Education