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Teaching Data Literacy in Social Studies: An Interactive Professional Development Tool Why teach data literacy in social studies? Not only is data literacy required by state standards and included in standardized assessments, it is important for understanding core social studies disciplines. This module addresses the role that data visualizations play in social studies standards, assessments, and texts. It also provides links to resources that can be used to support data literacy as a component of disciplinary literacy. What kinds of data visualizations will students encounter in social studies? Information can be visualized in multiple ways, from bar graphs to scatterplots, choropleth maps to distribution maps, timelines to time series. Designers can choose from an array of graphical elements such as points, lines, or icons used to represent data, and multiple aesthetic attributes such as color, shape, and size. Furthermore, designers can apply multiple combinations of titles, legends, and explanatory text to provide context for a data visualization. Given the almost dizzying array of data visualizations students may encounter in social studies, it is helpful to place them in categories related to the types of questions they will help us answer. How should students analyze data visualizations in social studies? The challenges that data visualizations present, coupled with their prevalence in social studies texts, standardized assessments, in online social studies resources, and as sources of information in society, suggest that teaching with and about data visualizations in social studies is essential. This module provides guidance for how teachers can support students' data literacy for social studies. Index of Lesson Plans This page contains a list of the minimal manuals and lessons found on this website. Minimal manuals are designed to be adapted to different grade levels and do not have a grade designation associated with them. Lesson plans are organized according to the school level for which they are designed. However, many of these lessons can be adapted for different grade levels.

How do students learn with data visualizations?

Reading data visualizations in print and online social studies texts can improve students' overall comprehension and quality of reasoning. And there is evidence to suggest that reading data visualizations helps students better understand historical and geographic context, multiple causation, and change over time — all important concepts for students to grasp in social studies subject areas. However, students may face significant challenges in trying to make sense of different kinds of data visualizations. This section provides insight into both benefits and challenges of reading timelines, maps, and graphs and charts.

In Module 2: Why teach data literacy in social studies?, you read that students can benefit from paying attention to data visualizations that accompany verbal text. In social studies textbooks alone, 90% of data visualizations provide students with extensional information not found in the main body of verbal text.[1] These data visualizations might extend the verbal text by providing geographic contextual information, illustrating changes or movement across space and time, or providing evidence for an argument or explanation. [2] As several scholars have argued, reading data visualizations and other visuals can improve overall comprehension and quality of reasoning, so failure to attend to these data visualizations may hamper students’ understanding of the information provided in the text.[3] Moreover, data visualizations might contain critical background knowledge that students can later use to understand references to people, places, events, or documents.

Unfortunately, research indicates that most students don't pay attention to data visualizations. For example, in a think aloud study that had elementary, middle, and high school students reasoning about a historical question with a history textbook, 74% of the students ignored the data visualization in the passage they were reading, despite the fact that the data visualization was directly related to the question they were trying to answer. Yet, when asked to read the data visualization, most of the participants said it was helpful for answering the question.[4]

Even if students do pay attention to data visualizations in texts, they may face significant challenges when trying to make sense of them. For teachers, it's important to be aware of these challenges, so that students may overcome them and reap more of the benefits.

Each section below provides a summary of some of the benefits and challenges associated with timelines, map, graphs and charts.

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Graphs are a common type of data visualization and can be distinguished from the other types of data visualizations by their well-defined reference system, such as horizontal or vertical axes on which data are plotted. Charts are topical or categorical data visualizations with no inherent reference systems, such as pie charts or word clouds. Graphs and charts can tell a powerful story and they can serve as compelling evidence. However, they also present multiple challenges for students trying to make sense of them.

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How Do Students Learn with Data Visualizations? References/Additional Reading