Truth or beauty? Social studies teachers’ beliefs about the instructional purposes of data visualizations

ABSTRACT

To prepare their students to navigate online information about current issues, teachers must be able to critically read a range of diverse and complex data visualizations. This study presents findings from task-based interviews with 25 social studies teachers on their instructional beliefs about the use of diverse data visualization types. In the interviews, teachers ranked two sets of data visualizations for their usefulness in teaching. One set was drawn from textbooks and the other from online media in order to highlight the challenges of visual complexity. The teachers’ rationales for their choices showed that they primarily think of data visualizations as unproblematic and discrete information instead of as sources of evidence that need to be critically evaluated. The results contribute to our understanding of teachers’ thinking about the uses of visual information and suggest implications for preparing teachers to assist students to critically evaluate online visual information.

KEYWORDS:

• Data visualizations
• online information
• social studies education
• teacher beliefs
• visual literacy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. The teachers’ attitudes toward data visualizations revealed a heightened awareness of the ways that bias operates in online visual information and a shift in their perception of the purposes of social studies education toward preparing students to identify trustworthy information. Due to space considerations, I plan to unpack these data in a future publication.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by a grant from the Committee on Faculty Research Support (COFRS) program at Florida State University.