The Efficiency of the Application of SPSS in Higher Education Teaching: An Experimental Study

Abstract

Acquiring statistical education is a prerequisite for the professional and scientific work of every pedagogue. Institutional support for the statistical education of students is a fundamental starting point in the development of research competencies necessary for a future pedagogue. The subject of this study was focused on examining the effectiveness of the application of a program for statistical data processing in teaching. The research aimed to examine whether students gained adequate knowledge in the field of Statistics in Pedagogical Research by applying the experimental factor SPSS in teaching. This means that the use of the SPSS program may significantly facilitate the acquisition of theoretical and practical knowledge pertaining to the field of statistics in pedagogical researches. The objective was to analyze whether using the SPSS software as part of university education would yield better knowledge of statistics than teaching without it. This objective was accomplished by analyzing the differences in the respondents’ scores on the knowledge test using the pre-test and the post-test groups of students. Three generations of pedagogy students at the Faculty of Philosophy, the University of Nis in Serbia, participated in the experimental research. The results showed statistically significant differences in the participants’ achievement in the initial and final tests.