The context for CIEP 404 Statistics for Behavioral Sciences is provided to assist the student in understanding how this courses fits within the School of Education as well as within teacher education. The context addresses three elements: social justice; technology, and; diversity. First, however, this course does serve a wide audience in terms of interests and professional development.

The framework for the course is presented by the School of Education as a general guide for each of the courses within the School of Education. You can view the actual School of Education Framework Statement. In general, the course does attempt to focus on the central theme of enlightenment as well as social justice. The class addresses social justice by providing a specific assignment addressing this issue. The students are asked to respond by interpreting results that clearly shows differential pay based on gender. The essence of the problem is to analyze the data and prepare a short technical report that identifies the problem as well as to determine whether or not their is a statistically significant difference between males and females relative to pay.

The technology element asks each faculty person to include and address the extent of technology within their respective courses which is the second element of the course context. CIEP 4o4 is intensively filled with virtually all types of current technology. These include the use of Word, SPSS, Powerpoint, electronic mail, and video taped programs.

Diversity is the third element as part of the context. Cultural diversity is addressed immediately within the course by virtue of address issues surrounding measurement practices. The in-class work session focuses on measuring human traits - in particular; height - and deals directly with the issues of cultural and gender bias that is built into measurement and which can contribute to error.