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The Promise and Practice of Teaching Data Literacy in Social Studies: A Companion Site Main Menu A Taxonomy of Data Visualizations 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. Data Visualizations as Primary Sources Humans have been creating different types of data visualizations for centuries. Explore this collection of timelines, maps, graphs and charts to see what they reveal about the historical time and place in which they were produced. 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. How do I help students create and integrate data visualizations for social studies? This page highlights several tools that are useful for data-based projects in social studies. And accompanying each tool is a "minimal manual" that provides guidance for using the tool in social studies inquiry- and project-based learning. Project-Based Learning Activities for Data Literacy in Social Studies Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, nec constituto comprehensam te. Sea no affert nemore comprehensam, eum te purto soleat accusata. Ea est magna malis. No atqui iudico est. In vel propriae suavitate. Est homero timeam cu, novum persecuti mea an. 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?

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In Module Two, 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 (Fingeret, 2012; Author, 2018). They 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 (Author, 2019; Author, in press). As several scholars (e.g., Norman, 2012; Roberts, Norman, & Cocco, 2015; Schnotz, 2002; Author, 2019) 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. Data visualizations might contain critical background knowledge that students can use to understand references to people, places, events, or documents. 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 them to grasp in social studies subject areas.[6]

However, research also indicates that most students don't pay attention to data visualizations. For example, in a think aloud study with ten elementary, seven middle, and ten high school students reasoning with age-appropriate history textbooks, 74% of these students ignored the data visualization in their selected passage, even though the data visualization was directly related to the question they were trying to answer. Even if students do pay attention to data visualizations they may face significant challenges. Each section below provides a summary of some benefits and challenges associated with timelines, map, graphs and charts.

Timelines
Timelines graphically display historical events in chronological order. State standards documents from 25 states across the United States required that teachers introduce students to timelines as early as kindergarten or first grade. In Michigan, students are introduced to timelines in kindergarten, where they are expected to create timelines using events from their own lives. And in second grade they are expected to distinguish between "years" and "decades" in order to demonstrate "chronological thinking." As you may have learned while completing the standards analysis exercises in Module Two, Michigan's direct treatment of timelines is sporadic (i.e., they are only mentioned in kindergarten, 2nd, 3rd, and 7th grades), but the standards nonetheless require that students learn about them, and in particular, that they learn how to create them. The question is why should students create timelines? How can the exercise of creating timelines help students learn?

As soon as a person begins making timeline, they begin making choices about what to include -- and choices about what to leave out. In other words, they make choices about what events or developments are historically significant. And the concept of historical significance is a really important aspect of historical thinking. It is at the root of understanding what the discipline of history is and how it is constructed. As Stephane Levesque argues:

Because they cannot study everything that happened in the past, historians are necessarily selective in their own investigations. Certain historical events, personages, dates, or phenomena are more important to their studies than others...History, to be meaningful, depends on selection and this, in turn, depends on establishing criteria of significance to select the more relevant and to dismiss the less relevant.

Just think about this: Have you ever felt upset that you didn't learn about something in a history class? Have you ever heard someone else complain about what wasn't covered in their history classes? Or have students ever asked you why you didn't learn about a historical topic? The topic probably wasn't addressed because the historian or teacher had a different idea than their audience about what is historically significant. Or it wasn't addressed because the topic wasn't deemed historically significant at the time -- after all, our ideas about historical significance change with time and place. According to Stephane Levesque, historians make choices about historical significance bases on the following criteria:

Importance - Contextualizing the past and considering what was perceived as important to those who lived at the time, irrespective of whether their judgments about the importance of the event were subsequently shown to be justified
Profundity-How deeply people were affected by an event
Quantity-The number of people affected by an event
Durability-How long an event endures
Relevance-Relation to current interests, accepting the fact that we cannot divorce ourselves from being social actors in the present

This is not necessarily how non-historians make choices about historical significance. As Levesque also argues, non-historians may make choices based on the following:

Intimate interests-Is this important to me personally? Do my loved ones have an intimate attachment?
Symbolic significance-Selection of some events for patriotic or collective justification.
Contemporary lessons-Use it to apply to the present.

And according to researchers Lauren McArthur Harris and Brian Girard, teachers make their own unique choices about significance:

Creating timelines offers students an opportunity to grapple with the concept of historical significance. In this activity, for example, students consider their own criteria for historical significance, compare it with historians' criteria, and then create a poster for "determining historical significance."

So what about analyzing timelines? Is that an activity that can benefit students' learning? Interestingly, state standards documents do a pretty poor job of addressing analysis of timelines. Only seven states require students to analyze timelines. In Michigan, for example, analysis of timelines is only mentioned in 4th grade But timelines are everywhere in social studies classes....

One way that timelines could be used to support learning is to ask students to analyze them for evidence of change and causation -- two other concepts that are really critical for historical thinking.

But let's think about the timelines see in print and online texts. Are they easy to read? Even though they may seem pretty simple and straightforward, there are actually aspects that can be quite confusing. Consider the following timeline, which is from...

Timelines present additional conceptual challenges for readers. When trying to extract information from a timeline, a reader must be aware of chronological conventions that denote quantities and passage of time (e.g., decades, centuries, BCE, and CE). They must also be aware of the discipline-specific temporal concepts that historians use in timelines, such as periodization, sequence, concurrence, and duration (Blow, Lee, & Shemilt, 2012; Lee, 2005). Timelines often display events that characterize a historical period, but the concept of a historical period alone can be puzzling if one does not understand what defines a period, or how it has been determined. Such confusion might be exacerbated by the fact that historians often disagree over periodization schemes (Blow et al., 2012; Lee, 2005). Furthermore, points on a timeline regularly show when events begin or end, but rarely show the duration of these events, even though historical phenomena can vary in duration from hours to hundreds or thousands of years. Events on a timeline may also appear as if events are one after another, but the events on a timeline often overlapped in real time (Blow et al., 2012).

Graphs and Charts
Graphs and charts can tell a powerful story. Just consider this data documentary from Neil Halloran...

Graphs can also serve as powerful evidence for arguments...

However, reading graphs requires several different steps, and if there is a breakdown in comprehension for any one of the steps, it could negatively impact students' understanding.