Developing Quantitative Literacy Skills in History and the Social Sciences

A Web-Based Common Core Standards Approach

By (author) Kathleen W. Craver

Not available to order

Publication date:

22 July 2014

Length of book:

190 pages

Publisher

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

ISBN-13: 9781475810523

History and social sciences educators have been charged with ensuring that our students are quantitatively literate. Being able to integrate research data in the form of graphs, charts, and tables and deconstruct quantitative evidence to address questions and solve problems is no longer the domain of mathematicians. Being quantitatively literate is considered an educational imperative in a data-drenched world that holds so many employment challenges. The internet contains a treasure trove of valid and reliable sources of quantitative data that history and social sciences teachers can easily use to satisfy the quantitative literacy requirements of the National Common Core Standards.

This book features 85 interesting and exciting multi-century and multicultural web sites that are accompanied by numerical critical thinking questions and activities. Teachers can pose the questions to their entire class or individually assign them. It also contains lists of best practices and examples for interpreting, visualizing, and displaying quantitative data. History and social sciences educators will find this book an indispensable tool for incorporating numerical literacy skills into their class activities and assignments.
With the current excitement and energy involving the Common Core State Standards, “reading like a historian,” and historical literacy, Dr. Craver’s work is extremely timely. The 85 web sites that she describes are wonderful resources for social studies teachers. The activities/questions that she provides require higher order thinking; promote high levels of engagement with historical data; incorporate questions that are interesting to young people and relevant to current events; and foster historical thinking skills. The web-based activities that are suggested require students to “use diverse formats of media, including visually and quantitatively, as well as in words” (Common Core State Standards, 2010, 60), just as the standards suggest. The activities engage students in reading, analyzing, synthesizing, writing, and speaking about evidence in descriptive, narrative, and persuasive ways. By doing so they immerse students in authentic disciplinary literacies. Kudos to Dr. Craver for compiling this list of resources and for creating these activities.