Malaysian Journal of Mathematical Sciences, December 2025, Vol. 19, No. 4
Rasch Calibration on The "Beliefs About Statistics" Scale for Prospective Mathematics Teachers
Sutrisno, Manuharawati, and Masriyah
Corresponding Email: sutrisno.21035@mhs.unesa.ac.id
Received date: 28 October 2024
Accepted date: 28 May 2025
Abstract:
Mathematics teachers must have different beliefs when teaching statistics because statistics have different characteristics from mathematics. Forming these beliefs takes a relatively long time, so, they must be prepared early in the prospective teacher preparation program. Unfortunately, until now, no instrument has been available to measure this construct. Therefore, this research aims to use Rasch analysis to develop a "beliefs about statistics" scale for prospective mathematics teachers containing $60$ items. The initial sample was obtained from $380$ prospective mathematics teachers spread across various colleges in Indonesia. After repeated calibration, leaving three items and two persons misfits, a dataset containing $57$ items and $378$ persons was obtained. The research results show that this scale is of good quality and has adequate psychometric properties. This scale successfully identified various problems of beliefs about statistics that prospective mathematics teachers have. Nevertheless, this research has provided a "beliefs about statistics" scale that is much needed for prospective mathematics teacher preparation programs.
Keywords: beliefs about teaching and learning statistics; beliefs about the discipline of statistics; instrument calibration; Rasch model; prospective mathematics teachers
