Topic 1
Aligning Statistics Education with Today’s Social Challenges
Convenors
- Alison Gibbs (Canada)
- Joachim Engel (Germany)
- Thomas Maworaa (Kenya)
- Leandro de Oliveira Souza (Brazil)
Abstract
Our learners are living at a time of many social challenges, including inequity based on identity, a global pandemic, climate change, and public and political discourse that denies scientific evidence. Social justice can be highly influenced by statistical literacy, and as educators we have a role to play in empowering citizens to use sound data-based reasoning to promote needed social change. Sessions in Topic 1 will explore how we can empower and educate all of our learners to engage in using statistical reasoning to address social challenges.
Papers are encouraged that address any of the following questions:
- How can statistics education activities promote engagement with social issues and develop learners' critical understanding of statistics about key social phenomena?
- How can statistics education empower people, individually and collectively, to be agents for social justice in both their local and global communities? What are the potentials and challenges of community-based learning connecting statistics with engagement in social issues?
- Which novel and innovative tools, technologies, visualizations and data sources are helpful in supporting our learners to address social justice issues (e.g. maps, networks, mobile devices, interactive displays)?
- What is the appropriate balance between technical skills (e.g. statistical modelling, interpretation of statistics and graphs) and socio-political dimensions (e.g., identifying bias, critiquing representations, making inferences with attention to the implications of historical and sociocultural context)?
- In considering the social challenges we face, what concepts in statistics should every educated citizen understand? How does the desire to address these challenges require rethinking how we teach? How do we ensure the equitable engagement of all of our learners?
- What are the roles of data literacy and data science education in promoting social justice?