Ki te kahore he whakakitenga ka ngaro te iwi
Without foresight or vision the people will be lost
- Kīngi Tāwhiao Pōtatau Te Wherowhero
Statistical literacy is an integral part of navigating modern, data rich personal and professional environments. The concerns for foresight and vision of the above whakataukī apply well in these modern data environments. Without adequate skills and awareness, desired data sovereignty and the decolonisation of the data stories told about Māori and Pacific peoples will not be possible [1]. Furthermore, data-assisted decision making with complex statistical models will be inaccessible to the communities most in need of understanding them, and the decisions made with them. Numbers are a global language but the stories they tell have important local power.
This project has four aims:While there is strong evidence of the value of “Math in a Cultural Context” at earlier levels of education for improving student achievement [3], to our knowledge, there are no similar projects to engage with indigenous and minority groups in introductory statistics courses by presenting them with personally relevant data stories. We hope the guidelines created will form powerful supporting tools for tertiary educators around New Zealand, and globally, to put more local heart into their content and teach globally used methods through personally relevant data stories.
[1] Kukutai, T. and Taylor, J. (Eds.). (2016). Indigenous Data Sovereignty: Toward an agenda. Acton, Australia: ANU Press.
[2] Lave, J., and Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press.
[3] Reyhner, J. A. (2015). Teaching Indigenous Students: Honoring Place, Community, and Culture. Norman, United State of America: University of Oklahoma Press.
As our project develops we hope to be able to list more of our partners and advisors here. In the meantime, check out our team and the Department of Statistics.
Can you support this mahi/work? We'd love you to get in touch if any of the following apply to you:Having your data profiled gives you an opportunity to build awareness of your work with thousands of university students each semester. We can also feed back any insights from our visualisations or testing to you, and may be able to help answer some of your burning questions.
Hineatua Parkinson and Jemaima Tiatia-Smith shared their projects and experiences. Both were SEED recipients under the 2017 theme of "Writing, writing everywhere" whose projects had goals also aligned with this year's "He vaka moana" theme. It was a wonderful chance to learn from them and get even more inspired about where our own projects could lead.
Beate Schuler visits Auckland every year to hear about the results of the programmes she has supported. The SEED grants are one of these progammes. It was inspiring to learn more about what the 2017 cohort had acheived and imagine what our project hopes to be able to report achieving this time next year.
Meeting other SEED Grant recipients from across the full range of disciplines the University of Auckland offers was incredible. The metaphor for this hui was about lashing our waka together. Just as small boats can come together to support each other across great stretches of te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa, the Pacific Ocean, so to we hope the SEED teams will be able to support and learn from each other so we can all succeed.
As part of our team meetings everyone is invited to bring a new word to share. Below are some of the words shared at our first meeting.
Kupu hou / new words:This project will take place during 2018, but we intend that the data products will be usable for multiple years, and the experience and knowledge gained and reported will be able to be put to use in other courses.
A seminar on our project will take place toward the end of 2018 but we have not decided a date yet. We'd love to invite you to join us, so if you're interested in attending, please email Liza, liza.bolton@auckland.ac.nz, with subject line: "Interest in Global Methods, Local Data Seminar". You can also contact Liza about anything else to do with this project.
This project is supported by The Schuler Educational Enhancement and Development (SEED) Fund for Innovation in Teaching. SEED Grants provide up to 25 applicants with up to $5,000 each to support innovative or experimental approaches to learning and teaching at the University of Auckland. We were selected as part of the 2018 theme 'Equity Challenges'
For more information about the SEED grants and past recipients, please visit the Centre for Learning and Research in Higher Education (CLeaR) website.
Please contact Liza Bolton, liza.bolton@auckland.ac.nz, with any questions about this project.
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