Implementing Civic Statistics: An Agenda for Action (original) (raw)

A Conceptual Framework for Civic Statistics and Its Educational Applications

Springer eBooks, 2022

This chapter presents a comprehensive conceptual framework of 11 facets and tools which together describe the knowledge, skills and dispositions that (young) adults need in order to comprehend, critically evaluate, communicate about, and engage with Civic Statistics regarding 'burning' societal issues, and that may enhance citizen empowerment. The framework is organized around three key dimensions involving engagement & action, knowledge, and enabling processes. It identifies knowledge-bases covering meaning for society and policy and critical evaluation and reflection; selected statistical and mathematical constructs and skills; core literacy and mathematical skills; understanding models and modelling, multivariate ideas and textual and rich visual representations; knowledge of research and data production methods and extensions related to official statistics and risk on the societal level; and it emphasises the importance of appropriate dispositions, critical stance, and habits of mind. We offer examples and curriculum tasks that illustrate each of the 11 facets and their interconnectedness. We also describe the use of a 'radar plot' tool to support the analysis of how balanced are prospective class activities or test items in terms of covering the 11 facets and tools. The chapter ends with a brief discussion of the implications of the conceptual model and its 11 facets for planning curricula, instruction, and assessments that can promote teaching and learning about Civic Statistics within mathematics education, statistics and data science education, and related disciplines.

Statistical literacy and society: What is civic statistics?

2019

How can we prepare students to understand statistical data and get insights regarding trends and changes on key societal issues such as demographic change, crime, unemployment, pay equity, migration, health, racism, and other areas of concern to society? This paper, summarizing issues of my plenary talk, introduces by extending the notion of statistical literacy a sub-discipline we call civic statistics. Civic statistics focuses on understanding statistical information about society, as provided by the media, statistical offices and other statistics providers. Civic statistics skills are required for participation in democratic societies, but include data that are open, official, multivariate and dynamic, and that are usually neglected in regular statistics education. I present some specific features of civic statistics, provide examples and describe implications for curricula, teacher activities and the future of statistical education. In my presentation, I will give a short online...

Civic Statistics and the Preparation of Future Secondary School Mathematics Teachers

2016

INTRODUCTION The availability of data has tremendously increased. The data deluge is changing the demands for engaged and informed citizenship in times of free access to data about social topics like income inequality, access to health services or migration through the internet, national and international statistics offices or NGOs. Understanding this kind of data requires different knowledge and dispositions than the current statistics education represents (Ridgway et al., 2013). There are new dimensions for civic participation in public decision processes to become a responsible citizen capable of critical and evidence based judgment about social topics as basis for committed involvement, the ability to understand and to interpret these data is indispensable (Engel, 2014). To understand these data citizens need specific statistical knowledge that is not part of the current curriculum, in addition to a cognitive and dispositional base that includes (but is not limited to) context k...

The importance of statistical literacy for democracy : civic-education through statistics

2018

Civic Education has had the same objective (“Mündigkeit”) for the last 50 years, but the conditions to achieve it have changed. Mündigkeit is a prerequisite for citizen’s participation, to strengthen and stabilize democratic structures. In the information age, Mündigkeit regarding statistics means having an orientation in the confusion of the modern information jungle and the deluge of quantitative information and statistics. The requirements for understanding and evaluating information about societal developments have changed: Statistical skills are becoming increasingly important for an evidence-based judgment in today's society. They entail understanding data-related arguments and representations, questioning possible conclusions as well as uncovering opinions and already made decisions

Civic Statistics in the training of pre-service mathematics teachers

2018

In an increasingly complex world, the involvement of informed and committed citizens is a critical resource in public decision-making at international, national and local levels. The project ProCivicStat, a strategic partnership of six universities funded through the Erasmus+ program of the European Union (funding period September 2015 to August 2018), explores a subfield we call Civic Statistics which focuses on understanding quantitative and statistical information about society as provided by the media, statistics offices and other statistics providers (Engel et al. 2016). Understanding Civic Statistics is required for participation in democratic societies, but involves data that often are open, official, multivariate in nature, and/or dynamic, that is not normally taught in regular mathematics and statistics education, let alone in civics or social study classes. Few high school teachers in mathematics receive any training on how to teach statistics, not to speak of social science teachers who may have no training in statistics at all. As a result, teachers stay within their comfort zone and overemphasize a narrow range of statistical techniques and computations (mathematics) or fail to engage with statistical ideas at all (social science). They pay too little attention to working with and understanding multivariate data that describe social trends, and to the analysis, interpretation and communication about the meaning of such data. But capacity building for informed and committed citizens has to start in school education. While focusing on curricula at the secondary and tertiary level, the ultimate goal of ProCivicStat is to strengthen civil society, empowering informed citizens for evidence-based decision-making and civil society engagement. The challenge is multi-facetted. Data literacy for civic engagement involves, among many other aspects, specific statistical knowledge, ICT skills, knowledge about computing and data structures, critical thinking, and much more.

A Way of Integrating Civic Learning Into Statistics Courses: Media Reports

2006

In this paper, we present a brief history of our efforts to incorporate civic learning into our statistics curriculum, highlighting our most recent approach, media reports. We discuss implementation issues, educational objectives, and give examples of student projects. Learning objectives, expected outcomes, and our assessment process are also given. An important aspect of this effort is the use of technology in report generation and dissemination. We discuss the development of these tools and how they have been used. We conclude with remarks on sustainability and possible future directions.

Statistical Literacy for Active Citizenship: A Call for Data Science Education

Statistics Education Research Journal, 2017

Data are abundant, quantitative information about the state of society and the wider world is around us more than ever. Paradoxically, recent trends in the public discourse point towards a post-factual world that seems content to ignore or misrepresent empirical evidence. As statistics educators we are challenged to promote understanding of statistics about society. In order to re-root public debate to be based on facts instead of emotions and to promote evidence-based policy decisions, statistics education needs to embrace two areas widely neglected in secondary and tertiary education: understanding of multivariate phenomena and the thinking with and learning from complex data.

Promoting Civic Engagement via Exploration of Evidence: Challenges for Statistics Education

2017

1 1 This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein. All materials are protected by copyright. They may be used as a whole or in parts under above CC License with the exception of the illustrations which may be used for educational purposes only. This syllabus is based on the facets of statistical literacy that make up Civic Statistics (Gal, Nicholson & Ridgway, 2017). There, facets are described in three groups: (1) Engagement & Action, (2) Knowledge Base (3) Enabling Processes. Engagement & Action (facets 1 -3, Meaning for society and policy; Critical evaluation and reflection; and Dispositions) describes features that pertain to any involvement with data about society. Similarly to process standards, these facets cannot be addressed in isolation but permeate any Civic Statistics topic and e...

Teaching Statistics: Going from Scary, Boring, and Useless to, Well, Something Better

PS: Political Science & Politics, 2018

ABSTRACTAlthough research methods and statistics play an increasing role in political science and beyond, students all too often find statistics classes intimidating and boring. This need not be the case, however, because statistics classes provide opportunities to pose and answer questions about which students care. This article highlights four steps to making our methods and statistics classes more engaging and meaningful.