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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 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. 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.

Spatiotemporal Data Visualizations

Spatiotemporal visualizations are complex, multi-layered displays with data indicating growth, movement, or other sorts of changes over time. They help us answer where and when questions simultaneously. They usually come in the form of maps, but there are spatiotemporal data visualizations that do not have a traditional map base. Spatiotemporal visualizations are prevalent throughout social studies disciplines but they are particularly prevalent in world history, accounting for about 42% of all visualizations in textbooks.[7] This is not surprising if one considers how important it is in world history to be able to imagine change or developments over large swaths of both space and time. All spatiotemporal data visualizations show some sort of change over time and space but it is probably useful to break their potential functions down even further.

Expansion or Contraction over Time and Space
Reading about the rise and fall of the Roman Empire or the rapid expansion of Islam probably holds little meaning for people if they can't imagine the space over which the empire ruled, or the speed with which the religion spread. Spatiotemporal visualizations can help people understand concepts of expansion or growth and contraction or decline more fully. They show changing spatial boundaries, as well as how those spatial boundaries changed with time. Static spatiotemporal visualizations that serve this purpose, such as the one on the left, often depict changes over space and time with different colors or patterns. Animated spatiotemporal visualizations like the one on the right typically place a timeline at the bottom of the visualization, with changes in space corresponding to the changing points on the timeline.

Movement over Time and Space
Some spatiotemporal maps function to reveal how people, objects, or ideas moving over space and time. These are different than spatial visualizations that show movement alone in that they include time markers to communicate the timeframe over which the people, objects, or ideas moved. Google Earth does this with several Voyager Projects, such as the one on Global Explorers, by using story cards in chronological order to narrate spatial movement. One of the most famous spatiotemporal data visualizations of all time is one that Charles Joseph Minard created to tell the story of Napoleon's march to Moscow in 1812. It is shown below in both its original French on the upper left and in English translation on the right. The visualizations shows movement over space using direction and cities and rivers to indicate relative location, and shows movement over time with dates when the troops arrived at those points. It also shows temperature, and the number of surviving troops during advance and retreat.

Progress or Patterns of Change over Time and Space
Some spatiotemporal visualizations show the adoption of ideas, the passage of laws, or other historical developments over time and space. These are thematic maps with dates overlaid to provide a kind of historical narrative. The map to the left, providing dates for the ratification of the U.S. Constitution is one example of such a visualization.

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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.
Contents of this path:
1. Spatial Data Visualizations Spatial data visualizations help us answer "where" questions. They show us locations, allow us to see patterns, distribution, movements, or relationships, or help us make comparisons. Most of the spatial data visualizations students will encounter in social studies are maps, but not all maps are the same, and not every map fulfills the same function. In addition, some of the spatial data visualizations students might encounter represent humans' efforts to map out stars and planets, caverns and tunnels, or parts of the human body.
2. Temporal Data Visualizations
3. Spatiotemporal Data Visualizations