A theoretical framework for developing statistical package competence as an outcome of statistical literacy

Developing students' competence with statistical packages, such as SPSS, Minitab, R and SAS, is an important, but somewhat overlooked outcome, of statistics education. This paper proposes that statistical package competence be regarded as an outcome of statistical literacy. While the development of statistical package competence should not interfere with the development of statistical literacy, statistical reasoning and statistical thinking, it should be recognised as an important skill our students need to acquire in becoming data scientists. A theoretical framework for the development of statistical package competence will be proposed along with an overview of a promising evidencebased training strategy. Issues, considerations and much needed research related to the training and assessment of statistical package competence will also be discussed.