Chapter 8: Supporting Statistical Literacies in the Context of a Data Visualization Project With Elementary Students

In today’s information age, representation, communication, and persuasion are increasingly connected (Kress, 2003). It is difficult to pick up a newspaper or browse a website without coming across a range of visualizations to read and understand. This data-intensive turn requires citizens who are able to understand, critique, and discuss quantitative concepts and arguments visually in a nimble fashion (Wolff et al., 2016). In addition, as Tufte (1983) and others have argued, good designers of visual graphics for mathematical relationships must be students of both mathematics and design. Thus, data visualizations bring together a consideration of context, mathematics, and design.

Engaging with data visualizations has the potential to highlight connections to students’ cultural and linguistic resources given the creative and authoring practices that are embedded in this process. This chapter focuses on a pilot project that sought to understand how to support elementary students in engaging with data visualizations for the first time. Our purpose is to describe the project and to illustrate the different data visualizations, considering design and data analyses that students created as part of their participation in the 8-week learning experience.