December 2015
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Statistics education is a fast evolving discipline, and major advances have been made over the past two decades regarding reform of the introductory statistics course. There is now growing consensus that the introductory statistics course should seek to develop statistical literacy. The objective of this pilot study was to explore and describe self-reports of course learning outcomes and assessment strategies, as well as the extent to which instructors of introductory statistics at the college level emphasize statistical literacy. The results revealed that for a considerable proportion of instructors, what they think they are teaching is at variance with what and how they teach. If this gap is not addressed, it will quite likely result in students not being adequately prepared in statistical literacy, as well as misrepresentation of the type and quality of instruction. This gap or conflict between what instructors think they do and what they actually do, can be viewed as pedagogical dissonance, which can be attributed to a multiplicity of factors, addressed herein.