The conference is tentatively scheduled to take place from the early morning of September 30 until lunch on October 2, 2025. During this period, attendees will have the opportunity to engage in a series of insightful presentations, workshops, and networking sessions. The agenda is designed to foster collaboration and innovation, providing a platform for participants to exchange ideas and explore new developments in their respective fields.
On Monday, September 29, we will host an optional Welcome Reception for all participants of the IASE Satellite Conference at the Geomuseum, offering all participants a venue to network and to smoothly start into the scientific programme of the conference.
Joachim Engel - Civic Statistical Literacy for Democratic Education
Abstract Keynote:
Democracy thrives on arguments based on evidence. Vivid democracies need well-informed citizens who can understand important social issues, discuss them and contribute to public decision-making. It has never been more important than today to be able to judge the credibility of data and its sources. Misinformation, absence of information and ignorance are all threats to our way of life. This talk highlights critical thinking and awareness of data quality as crucial components of data literacy for democratic societies. We take quality of democracy as a topic for students’ data investigations in the context of existential crises such as pandemics and military conflicts. Finally, we report about the implementation and evaluation of teaching concepts, developed in the project “Data Citizen” in Ludwigsburg, that aim at empowering students to think with data in socio-political contexts.
Biography:
Joachim Engel is a professor emeritus of mathematics and mathematics education at Ludwigsburg University of Education. He received a Diploma in Mathematics from the University of Bonn and a Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from the University of Southern California. Early on, he was fascinated by the mathematics of uncertainty. Over the years, his focus shifted from orthodox theory of probability and statistics towards bridging human understanding and sense making in situations of risk and uncertainty. Educating the public to better understand statistics about society is a burning issue where statistics education can make an important contribution to society. His research interests focus around statistical literacy, mathematical modeling and applying statistics in social sciences. He has been coordinator of the ProCivicStat project that aims to empower people to engage in informed decision making and participate in evidence based public policy. After his formal retirement in 2020, he continues to teach some courses and do editorial work, with a focus on enhancing the public’s understanding of statistics in the areas of health, environment and democratic values.
Katie Makar – Creating tiny data scientists: Preparing children for their uncertain future
Abstract Keynote:
An important goal of contemporary education is to develop students’ capacity to live and work in an increasingly complex and uncertain world. Concurrently, the world is rushing to orient towards AI and companies are urgently equipping their workforce to manage growing masses of complex data to make predictions. Amidst so much change, how does statistics education stay current and push schools to adopt more pioneering practices? In this talk, I will unpack a framework for data science education to prepare learners to live and create change in a data-intensive world. In particular, I will discuss the complexities and opportunities for developing children’s capacity to address age-appropriate problems that incorporate non-standard data, complex problems and computational thinking. I will highlight these issues using new research in the field to illustrate the kinds of experiences that are achievable for children and young people, and how teachers and classrooms can shift to enable these experiences to flourish.
Biography:
Dr Katie Makar is a Professor in Mathematics Education at the University of Queensland. She is President of the Mathematics Education Research Group of Australasia (MERGA) and co-Chair of the International Collaboration for Research in Statistical Reasoning, Thinking and Literacy (SRTL). Her career has been distinguished through helping schools create classrooms of the future where children tackle complex, messy problems that rely on robust data and mathematical evidence. In particular, Katie’s multiple award-winning classroom-based research studies teachers’ inquiry pedagogies and age-appropriate experiences for children in data science education. Her most recent publications explore inquiry in school-level STEM education, children’s citizenship in data science education, and primary teachers’ learning of inquiry pedagogies over time. A former high school mathematics teacher for 15 years, Katie’s work with preservice and practicing primary and secondary teachers continually seeks to have an impact on improving pedagogies to better prepare students for an uncertain future.
Andee Rubin – Data Are Everywhere - in Every Class and Even Outside of School
Keynote abstract:
After several decades of being a statistics/data science education researcher and curriculum developer, I’ve developed a “data lens” on the world. I see possibilities for exploring data everywhere I look. In this talk, I will explore several contexts for engaging students with data, including high school science, middle school social studies, early childhood classrooms, and zoos. In each case, I’ll describe how data and the disciplinary content or context were generally mutually supportive - but also how pedagogical dilemmas sometimes result from the attempt to merge two sets of educational goals. The descriptions will include video and transcripts of classroom interactions, demos of the technologies used and examples of student work in order to provide the kind of rich detail that reflects the complexity of learning contexts.
Biography:
Andee Rubin is a mathematician, computer scientist, and learning scientist at TERC, an educational research and development non-profit, where she has been studying the growth of students’ and teachers’ statistical reasoning for over 30 years, particularly as it is enabled by research-based tools for statistics education. She was involved in the development of several such pieces of software: Stretchy Histograms, Shifty Lines, TinkerPlots, Fathom, and CODAP, and led the ViSOR (Visualizing Statistical Reasoning) project, which studied how middle and high school teachers used data visualization tools with their students. She has developed curriculum materials around data for students as young as 6, both in and out of school (including in zoos and aquariums), as well as professional development materials for teachers and out-of-school facilitators. She is a member of the consensus study committee of the US National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine on fundamental competencies for the future of data and computing. In all her work, she is committed to empowering learners to use data to pursue social justice.
