Statistics education at a time of global disruption and crises: a growing challenge for the curriculum, classroom and beyond

Abstract

COVID-19 provided the world at large, including the world of mathematics education, with a challenge demanding attention and understanding. If met, this could potentially provide society with many of the skills needed to tackle the challenges of hyperobjects (Morton, 2013) such as climate change, which are potentially more threatening in the long-term. The COVID-19 context and the massive amount of data it has produced are the most recent examples of the growing recognition that the school mathematics curriculum has a role to play outside of the pure mathematics classroom. This paper considers COVID-19 as a stimulus for increasing the importance of statistical literacy and data literacy in preparing society for coping with world crises. Topics considered include the importance of acknowledging statistics as a significant component of mathematical ways of knowing, the contextual motivation provided by the COVID-19 crisis, the importance of statistics and statistical literacy, the place of statistics in the wider school curriculum, and finally, its place in the classroom. These topics need to be taken into account by both policy makers and teachers.