Jenny Terry (she/her) is a Lecturer and Doctoral Researcher of Statistics Education in the School of Psychology at the University of Sussex.
Jenny began teaching research methods and statistics at the undergraduate level in 2017-18 and began teaching R in 2018-19. She now convenes the first-year, first-semester statistics module at Sussex, where students are introduced to R. Jenny also teaches on other undergraduate and postgraduate statistics modules.
Jenny’s PhD combines her enthusiasm for improving research methods in psychology with her substantive interests in statistics education by examining the discriminant validity of the popular Statistics Anxiety Rating Scale (Cruise et al., 1985) using a variety of psychometric and other quantitative methods, including the SMARVUS project - a multi-lab statistics education study. She also has an active interest in coding pedagogy.
Jenny is the Founder and Director the RoSE (Researchers in Statistics Education) Network.
PhD Psychology, (in progress)
University of Sussex
PG Cert Learning and Teaching in Higher Education, 2019
University of Brighton
MRes Psychological Methods, 2018
University of Sussex
BA (Hons) Applied Psychology and Sociology, 2017
University of Brighton
It is important to understand whether maths anxiety, statistics anxiety, and other related constructs are distinct to prevent siloed research literatures that can impede scientific progress. Maths anxiety and statistics anxiety are currently treated as separate constructs in the research literature, yet no informative studies have been conducted that examine their distinctiveness. The present study tested the distinctiveness of the two constructs using exploratory factor analysis, latent profile analysis, and experimental work with 465 psychology undergraduates. Results indicated that the two constructs mostly likely share an underlying construct.
Teaching staff at a UK university who had recently undertaken introductory R/RStudio training took part in group interviews that explored their experiences of learning R/RStudio and how they thought their students would fare. Analysis indicated that motivation was crucial to overcoming the learning curve and that self-efficacy, percieved value, accountability, and managed anxiety were important to maintaining motivation.
Can embedding statistical teaching within a fictional narrative help to reduce anxiety and increase comprehension? This pilot study looked at the feasibility and plausible effects of using a fictional narrative to teach 11 statistical concepts and concluded that there are plausible benefits to using narratives to teach statistics that are feasible to test with further development.