What do you, the reader, want?

Recently, I was fascinated to see the original trust deed of 1978 setting up the Teaching Statistics Trust, which stated that, as part of the purpose “for the public benefit”, the Trust's aim was to set up a Journal to be “devoted to the dissemination of educative information about statistics and the teaching of statistics...”. The aim inside the front cover of the first issue in 1979 [1], included words that have been retained to this day within the current Aims and Scope. In particular, the words in bold in the following current statement were in the original Aim: “Teaching Statistics seeks to inform, enlighten, stimulate, guide, correct, inspire, entertain and encourage.” Similarly to the original that “The emphasis of the articles is on teaching and the classroom”, the key messages in the current Aims and Scope of Teaching Statistics are that this journal is “......intended for all those who teach statistics and data science ....... The emphasis is on good practice in teaching statistics, statistical thinking and data science in any context.......”. The initial support for the journal [1] was provided by four professional organisations, the International Statistical Institute (ISI), the Royal Statistical Society (RSS), the Institute of Statisticians (merged with the RSS in 1993), and the Applied Probability Trust (APT). The support and involvement of these professional organisations are indicative of the focus on education by the whole statistical community in the 1960's and 1970's. When the new United Nations took over many of the previous government-oriented responsibilities of the International Statistical Institute (ISI), the ISI took on more general professional roles, including setting up its Education Committee in 1948. Although the initial educational focus was on training in official statistics, particularly in developing countries, as described in [2,9], interest rapidly grew and broadened to university teaching, both for future statisticians and across disciplines, and then to schools. The chairpersons of the ISI Education Committee, and the topics of the Committee's Roundtable Meetings in the 1960's and 1970's (see [9]) reflect the intertwining work of leaders in the rapidly evolving and broadening discipline of the statistical sciences. Another indication was the establishment of the APT in 1964 at the University of Sheffield by Joseph Gani, Professor of Statistics at Sheffield 1965-1974, to publish the Journal of Applied Probability as an outlet for work on wide-ranging real problems, such as in genetics, epidemics, finance; applied probability is an integral and essential constituent of the broad tent of the statistical sciences. Statistics education and teaching must always evolve and broaden to reflect the growth and developments in our wideranging and increasingly vital discipline of the sciences of statistics, data and chance. The intertwining of statistical education developments can be seen in [1,2,9]. In the UK, the setting up of a Committee on Statistical Education was followed by the Project in Statistical Education (POSE) at Sheffield University in 1975 with Peter Holmes as Director. Internationally the ISI Education Committee set up the Task Force on Teaching Statistics at School Level (TOTSAS), led initially by Vic Barnett, and the Task Force on International Conferences in Statistical Education, the first of which was held in Sheffield in 1982. In the USA, a Quantitative Literacy Project was established, leading eventually to the development of an Advanced Placement Statistics (AP Stat) course in the 1990s [4]. The TOTSAS group established a regular newsletter (International Statistical Education newsletter) for ISI members and which was circulated to interested school and university teachers. From the work of POSE and TOTSAS, Teaching Statistics was born in 1979. Almost five years ago [7], I included a little of the above in commenting on content knowledge and content pedagogy in writing about the practice of teaching statistics. For many years, the scope statement of Teaching Statistics included “for students aged 9-19 years” but the scope statement now better reflects the ubiquitous and ever-developing nature of statistics by encouraging focus on all teaching at “introductory” level, no matter to what age group or level, recognising the extent of teaching across disciplines at upper educational levels and into workplaces, as well as broadening the remit to statistics and data science. After some comments below on general and promising trends informed by informal browsing of recent years' issues, I pose some questions for readers. The comments also incorporate input from the wonderful reviewers DOI: 10.1111/test.12316