GAISE-ing on Social Justice

Information

The Guidelines for Assessment and Instruction in Statistics Education (GAISE; GAISE College Report ASA Revision Committee, 2016) offered recommendations for teaching statistics in the undergraduate setting. Teaching Statistics using Social Justice (TSSJ; Lesser, 2007) provides a way to incorporate and synthesize the GAISE recommendations, while also supporting the development of students as citizens (Westheimer & Kahne, 2004). The availability of data relating to social phenomena is highly useful for aligning instruction with the GAISE recommendations and supporting the overall goals of statistical instruction, suggested by Lesser (2007) and Weiland (2019).

This poster will describe a data-based open inquiry task using data from the University of Chicago’s GSS Survey Repository in an introductory statistics course. Students will create questions of interest and use CODAP to investigate variables that inform the answer to their questions, for example, about home ownership or harassment by race and gender. The activity provides an active-learning opportunity for students to experience the investigative process with multivariate data, integrating real data with context and purpose and using technology to analyze data. Student engagement with the relatable, interesting data used to answer their self-generated research question will improve conceptual understanding. Finally, assessments that evaluate student learning will be discussed.