Science News Infographics: Teaching Students to Gather, Interpret, and Present Information Graphically

Abstract

Look around, and you will see lots of visual data and information. Government websites and other sources are opening more and more data to public access. Scientists use graphs to represent data in their analyses, journal articles, and press releases. Designers and scientists invent new ways of visualizing data to bring science to life. Information graphics, or infographics, are widely used to convey complex science and its importance to society. To be educated consumers and citizens, students need to understand and be critical of information presented in graphical form. Researchers, accordingly, have called for fostering the representational competence of young people (diSessa and Sherin 2000) and developing their multimodal literacy (Jewitt and Kress 2003). Graphical representations of data are also emphasized in standards and high-stakes assessments. Interpreting and creating graphical representations are part of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS Lead States 2013), and students are assessed on these skills in the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), the ACT, and state accountability exams. This article describes models for integrating infographics into high school science classes. The goal is to teach students graphical representation, while building their 21st-century data and information literacy. We began in 2007, when Rob Lamb, the first author, discovered GOOD, a magazine that publishes infographics related to science and technology (see On the web). Lamb combed through the publication, trying to understand each image at a deep level and the relationships among the data. In 2009, Lamb joined a group of teachers and university education researchers (including this article's coauthors) on a grant project called Science Literacy through Science Journalism (Scijourn) (Polman et al. 2010 and 2012; Saul et al. 2012). This National Science Foundation (NSF)--funded grant involved young people reading and reporting science news to broaden their science literacy. The students learned to: * search for science information * critically evaluate the credibility of sources and make sense of ideas from multiple sources * understand the relevance of science to their own and others' lives * put cutting-edge science into context * communicate their understandings The initial piloting of Scijourn focused on instructors teaching students how to write news-style science articles. After the grant's first year, Lamb realized that he could teach students, in a similar way, how to read and create science news infographics. The leap from traditional news articles to infographics energized and motivated his students. He saw them analyzing complex graphical representations and enjoying it, then asking for more examples. This led to Collaborative Infographics for Science Literacy (CISL), another NSF project aimed at enhancing understanding of science and data through the critique and creation of infographics. We developed activity models that use infographics for visual read-aloud/think-alouds, a re-visualize activity, and student-authored projects. Visual read-aloud/think-alouds of infographics A read-aloud/think-aloud is a technique for modeling critical science news reading (Saul et al. 2012). Teachers read news articles aloud, occasionally pausing to explain their thoughts, modeling how to critically and scientifically read the article. This shows students how teachers perceive the world, creating closer teacher-student connections. We adapted this technique to read infographics. Every day, as students arrived in class, the teacher projected a science infographic on an interactive whiteboard (see On the web for a source list of professional infographics). Then, in the read-aloud/think-aloud lessons, the teacher explained how he would read the data, interpret its meaning, and understand its implications, both intellectually and personally. …