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Talking social justice in intro stats

Silas BergenWinona State UniversityJSM 2015, Seattle, WA

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Why talk social justice?

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How to talk social justice?

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What happens next?

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TSSJ would include students developing a sense of empowerment to be able to use statistics to “talk back” to or change the world.

[S]omething done even just in a small dose can still be the thing that is most memorable or transformative from a course.

There is an emerging body of evidence that suggests that social justice examples support student engagement.

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Stat 210 evaluations, Fall 2014: The thing I liked most about the course was…• Applying what we learned back to real-life cases

• Real world examples and applications

• Assignments/notes that analyzed data sets relevant to current events/topics

• Seeing statistics in real-life situations

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Stat 210 evaluations, Fall 2014:Any additional suggestions/comments…• There were some moments that I felt really uncomfortable with some

of the problems and talking about them.

• More appropriate topic for homework avoid uncomfortable topic such as racist statistics.

• Don’t use such controversial topics.

• Give less of white vs black and babies.

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Life-Course Theory in North Carolina

Michael C. Lu, MD, MPH and Neal Halfon, MD, MPH, “Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Birth Outcomes: A Life-Course Perspective,” Maternal and Child Health Journal 7, no. 1 (March 2003): 13–30, http://mchb.hrsa.gov/infantmortalitysummit/disparitieslifecourse.pdf.

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• Data:

• North Carolina Birth Data (Via the NC Vital Statistics Dataverse)

• American Community Survey (ACS), subset of NC residents (via the U.S. Census Bureau’s DataWeb)

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Reflection questions (extra credit)• What are the racial stereotypes we hold in our heads? What are the things we think but

don’t say?

• What would happen if we respectfully discussed our thoughts on and questions about different ethnic groups in a multiethnic setting? What would you ask? What would you say?

• In what ways has your racial/ethnic background shaped your current values, habits, practices, and personal priorities?

• Can racial inequity ever be eradicated? If so, how?

• What steps can you take to check against any deep-rooted, perhaps subconscious, prejudices against people of other races, sexual orientations, or religions?

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Suspensions at Winona Senior High

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Suspensions at Winona Senior High

Office of Civil Rights: http://ocrdata.ed.gov

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1. Write 3-4 sentences summarizing your findings, as if you were reporting them to a WSHS administrator or at a parent-teacher meeting. What “action steps” might you recommend to school administrators and teachers as a result of your findings?

2. What do you think about using suspension as a method of disciplining bad behavior?

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What’s next?

• Compile list of more resources; from Lesser:• JSE Data Archive (www.amstat.org/publications/jse/jse_data_archive.html)

• “Simpson’s Paradox: An Example from a Longitudinal Study in South Africa”• “The Statistics of Poverty and Inequality” • “Getting What You Pay For: The Debate Over Equity in Public School Expenditures”

• Expand to upper-level classes

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TSSJ in upper-level classes: Discrimination by the CA Department of Developmental Services?

• Stat 310 (Intermediate statistics) take-home final exam• DSCI 310 (Data visualization) assignment

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Visualizing gender income inequity with ACS data

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Visualizing gender income inequity with ACS data

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Visualizing gender income inequity with ACS data

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Larry Lesser webinar:

“It can be very helpful to attend conferences and workshops on this topic and the networking and dialogue can continue even afterwards” (that’s you!)

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Thank you!

sbergen@winona.edu

http://course1.winona.edu/sbergen/resources

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New tenure-track position in statistics/data science starting Fall 2016