Social Justice in Statistics | Resource List

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With students' constant awareness and desire for mathematics content to be relevant to their world, intertwining a statistics and social justice lesson into one can provide students with the unique opportunity to discover, discuss, and explore a social justice topic using statistics. The author provides evidence for why body image is important and proposes an idea of how teachers can incorporate statistics and body image into one cohesive lesson. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing research suggests a majority of faculty include social justice content in research courses but not through the use of existing quantitative data for in-class activities that foster mastery of data analysis and interpretation and curiosity about social justice–related topics. By modeling data-driven dialogue and the deconstruction of quantitative meaning making related to social justice in and around social work practice topics, we can prepare our students to be agents of change in their social work careers and possibly engage our students in an often difficult course. Specifically, I provide examples for how discussions about socioeconomic justice can be infused in teaching about univariate, bivariate, and multivariate statistical analyses from the perspectives of critical consumption and the production of research. [AUTHOR ABSTRACT]

This article communicates the value in teaching for social justice in a mathematics classroom. A lesson is provided with the intent of empowering students to reach statistically sound conclusions that hold weight and change their perspectives through the vehicle of social justice. The lesson involves students investigating whether wealth has an impact on quality of life. We, as teachers, don't need to keep trying to make our students care about statistical concepts, their craving for justice will do that for us if we let them tap into it through real, compelling data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the dearth of literature specifically on teaching statistics using social justice, there is precedent in the more general realm of teaching using social justice, or even in teaching mathematics using social justice. This article offers an overview of content examples, resources, and references that can be used in the specific area of statistics education. Philosophical and pedagogical references are given, definitional issues are discussed, potential implementation challenges are addressed, and a substantial bibliography of print and electronic resources is provided.