Spiral Pedagogy: Developing a Quantitative Habit of Mind in Marketing Students

In marketing, the traditional approach for teaching quantitative concepts uses individual courses, such as marketing research and business statistics. While this pedagogy is common, research indicates it is difficult for students to master quantitative concepts in a single course. Instead, quantitative reasoning (QR) requires repeated practice, so students develop a quantitative habit of mind. While the integration of analytics across the marketing curriculum could help students deepen their understanding of quantitative concepts, program-wide curricular change tends to be slow because it requires the coordination of multiple instructors across several courses. The current study investigated an innovative alternative – spiral pedagogy – that integrated quantitative concepts into a marketing management course. The study analyzed 384 QR assessments from 40 students before, during, and after the course. The time of the assessment had a large effect on students' use of QR (ηp2 = .93) and quantitative confidence (ηp2 = .89). Qualitative feedback also indicated the spiraled lessons fostered a quantitative habit of mind that helped students beyond the classroom.