Abstract

Concerns abound over the quality of learning in statistics, globally and in South Africa, where issues of disciplinary difficulty may be linked to poor schooling. This study set out to explore a qualitative understanding of how students learn in statistics, of the experiences and processes involved, and how learning may be supported in this context while adopting the theory of threshold concepts as a framework to yield insights beyond quantitative success factors. A tutorial program was designed and informed by successful disciplinary pedagogy which conformed to a threshold concepts orientation. Interactive qualitative analysis was employed as the methodological frame. The study revealed that effective learning is a strongly affective, transformative process, requiring reflection and the ability to apply disciplinary ideas to relatable real-world contexts. These findings are broadly consistent with the threshold concepts framework, highlighting that learning has strongly affective aspects entwined with the cognitive; that it might entail periods of stuckness and liminality; that particular concepts are likely to be both troublesome and—once mastered—transformative; and that disciplinary learning has implications for students’ worldview and identity.