What happens when attitudes toward statistics change (increase vs descrease) during the course?

Positive attitudes toward statistics are related - with different extent, and directly or indirectly- to a better achievement. What educators do during their courses might help students in improving their attitudes, but it is also possible that it produces no change or even a negative change. Investigating changes in attitudes that occur attending an introductory statistics course, we aimed to highlight their relationships with the exam performance and the learning strategy adopted by students. Results attested that a decrease in the affective component of attitudes toward statistics was more likely to be associated to ineffective learning strategies, poor performances, and exam failures. These findings confirm the importance of implementing pedagogical techniques that help in improving students’ positive attitudes