Creative insubordination in statistics teaching: Possibilities to go beyond statistical literacy

Abstract

Statistics education has the potential to assist students to develop their identities and engage in problems and social contexts that assist in empowering them to act politically in the future. The actions and narrative reported in this paper seek to identify the way in which teachers could develop and implement statistical inquiries that utilize aspects of creative insubordination to enhance student learning experiences. This paper reports on two students who were supported to produce information and act politically on a problem founded in their social and cultural context. Reported practices in this research involved inquiry tasks that promoted collaborative exploration of ideas, data analysis, and reporting. Results evidence that teaching statistics through projects that focus on the development of political actions, Creative Insubordination, have the potential to improve students' statistical skills. As a consequence, the students were able to go beyond being data producers and data consumers to being statisticians and political activists, a shift necessary for students to understand how data can be used to transform their lives and those of others.