Introduction The compelling case for data literacy
One Speaking the language correctly
Two Creating a snap shot of data with a picture
Three Presenting a mountain of data with one number
Four Understanding why range in your data is important
Five Drawing a sample to represent a whole group
Six Putting your assumptions to the test
Seven T-tests: Examining differences between two groups
Eight ANOVA: What if there are more than two groups?
Nine Chi Square: Examining distributions for differences
Ten Correlations: Detecting relationships
Eleven Reporting your data clearly and strategically
Susan Rovezzi Carroll, PhD, is president of Words & Numbers
Research, Inc. a research and evaluation firm that she founded in
1984. Projects have included quasi-experimental designs, original
instrument development, and data analysis using SPSS and HLM for
the U.S. Department of Education and the National Science
Foundation.
David Carroll is vice president of Words & Numbers Research, Inc.
and his expertise involves the development of indicators for
assessing performance outcomes. He offers demographic data
analysis, marketing strategy and execution, and organizational
development to clients in education and other non-profit settings.
In How to Become Data Literate, Susan Rovezzi Carroll and David J.
Carroll, affiliated with Words & Numbers Research, provide succinct
yet comprehensive support for administrators wading through applied
basic quantitative statistics as a tool for data analysis. In fewer
than 150 pages, the authors offer instruction for managing,
manipulating, visualizing and interpreting the findings of data
analysis projects. . . .[T]he book provides support for
administrators seeking to understand and use common statistical
techniques. I plan to apply this text in the education courses I
teach and will strongly recommend it to my doctoral students. But
the text also should be considered by educational leaders looking
for an introduction to or a refresher of quantitative statistics.
If your work responsibilities include making sense of data and
analyzing results from a practical, programmatic perspective, or if
you need support for quantitative statistics courses that you might
be taking, I suggest you consider this work.
*School Administrator*
Ultimately, the book is what the authors intended to write—an
easy-to-read statistics primer for educators. This book will be a
welcome alternative to textbooks among educators who worry that
they do not have the time or ability to make sense of the methods
behind ‘data-driven decision making’ (p. v). By explaining the gist
of statistics and providing concrete examples applied to simple
problems in schools and classrooms, the book provides an entry
point for practitioners who need to negotiate debates about how to
translate research into practice. For educators who want to become
active users and producers of data, this book should be viewed as a
springboard—not a user’s manual— to becoming data literate. I will
keep this book on my shelf, ready to share with those students who
request a supplement ‘written in English’ to make sense of their
textbook. The contrasts between this light read and our heavy
textbook will allow me to raise important questions about what it
means to understand data and use data in the service of improving
education.
*Mid-Western Educational Researcher (MWER)*
As educators, we are increasingly called upon to make decisions for
our districts, schools, classrooms, and individual students based
on sometimes overwhelming amounts of frequently misunderstood data.
This book is a much-needed gem, describing in easily
understandable, straightforward language, the reasons for, uses of,
and techniques for developing, manipulating and interpreting this
data, ranging from mean, median and mode to ANOVA, Chi Square, and
multiple regression. The data literacy described in this book is
quite different from a poorly understood statistics textbook that
many teachers remember from their graduate or undergraduate
courses. This is something that every teacher and administrator
will want to turn to again and again, as they frame questions and
search for reliable, significant, evidence-based answers to
critical issues they face every day.
*Linda Jensen Sheffield, Ph. D., Regents Professor Emerita,
Northern Kentucky University, Highland Heights, KY*
Ask a Question About this Product More... |