Learning to advocate with data in a modelling environment

Abstract

Modelling data can provide students with experiences to develop their understanding of contributing factors to a data-based situation, their ability to offer ideas towards solving a problem, and their written communication around decision-making, argumentation, and advocation for change, a nascent area of research. Motivated by personally relevant societal issues, novice 11-year-old students were introduced to a mechanistic modelling approach using TinkerPlots, with the aim of replicating underlying distributions to simulate phenomena seen in data. Follow Up Tasks to Model Eliciting Activities were used to support and enhance students’ statistical writing about their modelling process, and their argumentation, decisions, and recommendations. The findings indicate that students’ written communication and advocacy could be improved.