“Is There Anyone in This Room Who Wouldn’t Be Counted?” Pedagogy at the Intersection of History, Data Literacy, and Justice

Data literacy explorations are becoming commonplace across a wide range of school subjects.While disciplinary inquiry with data is relatively new to the history classroom, social justice topics are familiar to the setting.Pedagogical practices at the intersection of history, data literacy, and justice have not been studied in depth.This paper identifies pedagogical practices and reflections that shape justice-oriented, high school U.S. history units that center data literacy.Videos of curriculum design meetings, whole-classroom pedagogy, and post hoc reflections on the curricular units were collected and analyzed.Themes from the units, which center the U.S. Census Act of 1790 and W.E.B.Du Bois' transformative work in data visualization, highlight historical inquiry with data and the ways in which data can be used for social change toward justice visions.