CLASSROOM ACTIVITIES & LESSON IDEAS
Essential Questions About Communicative Justice
“Data is more than one voice in the room.”
Mona Chalabi, Journalist and Artist
Good questions are an essential tool in a teacher’s Communicative Justice toolbox. Asking questions about what data is, what we do with data, and who gets to work work with data is fundamental to communicative justice. Listening to our learner's questions and supporting their exploration of answers opens up new meaning-making possibilities. Here are some essential questions to get the conversation started with your learners and colleagues.
Note to Teachers
Our CJI activities aim to promote learner talk and interaction around data, with the following principles in mind:
We invite you to look for these principles in our activities. We also invite you to develop your own activities that put these principles to work and cultivate a community of data storytellers in your own classroom.
Learners need to play with data - they need frequent, scaffolded opportunities to test out the meaning in data.
Learners need to see themselves in data - they need opportunities to explore the world of data through their own eyes, from their own experience.
Learners need practice ‘speaking data’ - our learners can learn to ‘speak data’ in English — but English is not the only language we can use to ‘speak data’. We should support learners’ use of everyday language, first languages, science language, math language, even their use of imperfect English, as valuable resources for meaning-making.
For more about our pedagogical approach:
Handley MA, Santos MG, Bastías MJ. Working with Data in Adult English Classrooms: Lessons Learned about Communicative Justice during the COVID-19 Pandemic. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. 2023; 20(1):696. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph20010696