Adapting Habermas’ construct of communicative rationality into a framework for analyzing students’ statistical literacy

Abstract

This study argues that the works of philosopher Jürgen Habermas can provide useful directions for mathematics education research on statistical literacy. Recent studies on the critical demands posed by statistical information in media highlight the importance of the communicative component of statistical literacy, which involves students’ ability to react to statistical information. By adapting Habermas’ construct of communicative rationality into a framework for statistical literacy, a novel analytical tool is presented that can provide theoretical insights as well as in-depth empirical insights into students’ communication about statistical information. Central to the framework are the four validity claims of comprehensibility, truth, truthfulness, and rightness which interlocutors need to address to engage in statistical communication. The empirical usefulness of the framework is shown by presenting the results of a study that examined Grade 5 students’ responses to fictional arguments about the decline of Arctic sea ice. The Habermas-based framework not only reveals that complex evaluations of statistical arguments can take place even in Grade 5 but also shows that students’ evaluations vary greatly. Empirical results include a content-specific differentiation of validity claims through inductively identified sub-categories as well as a description of differences in the students’ uses of validity claims.