'No More Pointy-Clicking, Numbers Stuff: Building Staff Quantitative Skills.'

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There is a growing awareness in the social sciences, particularly sociology, that undergraduate students lack numbers-skills and the ability to conduct statistical analysis of data. There are a variety of reasons for this relating to a national problem with maths teaching at all levels; national low levels of numeracy; sociology students seeing their subject as 'arts' and 'people' rather than 'science' and 'numbers'; poor teaching of statistical analysis; often baffling jargon; and a lack of 'real world' application. Although this issue is beginning to be addressed, little attention has been given to the increasingly low levels of statistical and numbers skills among the staff who teach those students. More often than not students are being taught statistical analysis by staff with only rudimentary skills in this topic; this typically leads to low levels of student (and staff) satisfaction with such courses. This has the knock-on effect of turning students away from such topics and skills; meaning fewer graduates will go on to careers using these skills or indeed teaching them to others. Thus, addressing staff skills levels is crucial to addressing the issue, within the social sciences, of poor numbers skills among undergraduates. This project aims to this issue by producing an integrated approach to staff training and support that has departmental and institutional support that will continue beyond the project's funding cycle. It seeks to do this by developing and running two quantitative methods training courses, one of which will be tailored to the needs of staff who have only a basic level of knowledge, and the other seeks to develop specialist skills in some staff who have prior statistical training. Staff will receive academic credit for the course and this could be used to achieve a teaching qualification. As well as supporting the development of core skills; the project will also train and support staff specifically in relation to the teaching challenges presented by quantitative and 'numbers' work. An annual workshop will be run that will focus on 'what works' and the sharing of best practice between staff. A peer-coaching system will be established for staff to provide mutual support and development during teaching. Staff will be encouraged, through the teaching workshop sessions, to embed space for 'numbers work' in non-quantitative courses. The project seeks to demonstrate how an integrated approach to staff training and support can be achieved.The findings of this project will be useful for all HE staff involved in teaching quantitative and statistical methods, providing online staff support materials for others to use and it will influence teaching and learning theory and practice as it relates, specifically to sociology, and more generally to other social science subjects.