Ways of teaching statistics for the health area

Abstract

Statistical support to the health field has widely grown and continues advancing, especially after the popularization of computers and specific software. Terms such as ‘evidence-based practice’ and ‘epidemiology’ have the Statistics as one of their pillars and are common to the health area. Given the Statistics’ importance, many efforts to improve its teaching and learning have been disseminated in academia. This work shows and analyzes the ways the teaching of Statistics has taken, considering the bibliographical review by Garfield (1995), reestablished by Garfield and Ben-Zvi (2007), focusing on the specific case of the health area by our literature review. This last review included articles published from 2007 to 2017 in journals from health and teaching areas. The literature review analyzed 26 articles, which were classified into two categories: psychological aspects and teaching methodologies. The teaching of Statistics has evolved as an area of study and research. Individual and specific efforts have now received proper institutional guidelines for the teaching of Statistics. However, there are few instruments for evaluating what students learn. Yet, the use of theories of learning is minimal, what impacts on methodologies highly based only on the teachers’ practice.