TeachingWithData.org Resources for Teaching
Quantitative Literacy in the Social Sciences
Agenda
• The Teaching with Data project– Goals– What is quantitative reasoning?– Project partners– What’s in the TwD?
• Examples of teaching resources in the TwD– ICSPR – Teaching Modules – social capital– General Social Survey – Quick Tables –
religion– Population Reference Bureau – immigration– SSRIC – Teaching Resources – social issues
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Goals• Improve students’ quantitative
reasoning• Give students first hand experience
with analyzing and interpreting data• Provide faculty with resources to
bring data into the classroom• Provide faculty with ready-to-use
data sets and exercises
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What is Quantitative Reasoning?
• “higher-order reasoning and critical thinking skills needed to understand and to create sophisticated arguments supported by quantitative data.”
• National Numeracy Network (http://serc.carleton.edu/nnn/resources/index.html)
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Teaching With Data
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Project Partners• ICPSR (http://www.icpsr.umich.edu) • SSDAN (http://www.ssdan.net) • Others involved
– American Economic Association Committee on Economic Education
– American Political Science Association– American Sociological Association– Association of American Geographers– Science Education Resource Center, Carleton
College
ICPSR: Inter-university Consortium for Political and
Social Research• Web site: http://www.icpsr.umich.edu• World’s oldest and largest social science
data archive• Over 700 members worldwide• Currently has over 7,800 studies
available in multiple formats including SPSS, SAS, STATA, and SDA
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SSDAN: Social Science Data Analysis Network
• Web site: http://www.ssdan.netMakes U.S. census data
and other large data sets accessible to users
• Includes– Data Counts –
http://www.ssdan.net/datacounts – CensusScope –
http://www.censusscope.org – Kids Count –
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What’s in the TwD?
• Teaching exercises using real data• Maps, charts and tables• Data that you can use to create
your own teaching exercises• Publications focusing on pedagogy• Meta data for easy searching
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Disciplines Covered in TwD (with number of entries)
• Sociology (502)• Economics (370)• Political Science (226)• Geography (148)• Public Health (99)• Public Policy (77)• Environmental Sciences (75)• History (68)• Social Work (25)• Anthropology (3)
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TwD is Searchable
• Simple and advanced searching– By discipline– By subject
• Browsing– Filtering to narrow results– Can start with discipline or subject or
type of resources
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Example – ICPSR – Social Capital
• ICPSR has developed data-driven teaching modules. This module on social capital uses SDA (an online statistical package) http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/icpsrweb/ICSC/
• This module can be used in its entirety or chunks of it can be integrated into a class as a student exercise
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Example – General Social Survey – Quick Tables –
Religion • Quick Tables is an easy way for students to
explore relationships among variables in a data set http://sda.berkeley.edu/quicktables/quicksetoptions.do?reportKey=gss08%3A1
• This resource can easily be integrated into a lecture or class discussion focusing on religion and society
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Example – Population Reference Bureau –
Immigration • PRB provides population data and
teaching exercises for the classroom http://prb.org/Educators/LessonPlans/2005/TheChangingFaceofAmerica.aspx
• This exercise could easily be used as a student exercise to introduce students to the topic of immigration
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Example – SSRIC – Social Issues
• The Social Science Research and Instructional Council (SSRIC) has many teaching exercises and modules as well as data sets http://diva.sfsu.edu/bundles/187700
• These exercises could be used in a class on critical thinking to provide experience in hypothesis formulation and testing. It could also be used in other contexts
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Try it!
• Go to website at http://www.teachingwithdata.org
• Browse by your discipline• Find something you think will work
in one of your classes• Give it a try this year
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Keep in Mind
• Be sure and work through the exercise before using it in class
• Why?- Sometimes you might want to rewrite parts
of the exercise for clarity• Don’t be reluctant to modify the exercise
to make it more useful to you. It always a good idea to let the author know what you are doing
• Give yourself plenty of lead time
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Contact for More Information
• Placeholder for local contact information
• TeachingWithData.org – [email protected]
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