Practical Teaching Strategies for Hypothesis Testing

Teaching the concept of inferential statistics is one of the most challenging tasks for statistics educators. Often, students cannot make logical connections between inferential statistics and other topics such as descriptive statistics and probability. The source of difficulty may be that inferential statistics is based on complex ideas such as hypothetical reasoning, data analytic methods, and probabilistic thinking. This article presents classroom practices that teachers can easily adapt for their statistics classes to teach fundamental ideas of inferential statistics. The expected educational outcome is the conceptual understanding of the elements of statistical testing rather than learning about a specific testing methodology. Using the proposed practices, students are guided to propose their own hypotheses, collect actual data, and make their own inferences, rather than following a predetermined sequence of procedures. The practice material is divided into three subtasks, so that teachers can plan their curriculum effectively and perform formative assessments regarding students' progress.