International Statistical Literacy Project (ISLP)

Project Coordinator and Partners

The International Statistical Literacy Project is coordinated under the umbrella of the International Association for Statistical Education (IASE ), a section of the International Statistical Institute (ISI ).

The project is overseen jointly by the Executive Committee of the IASE and the International Statistical Literacy Project ( ISLP) Advisory Committee. The members group is based on professionals from national, governmental bodies and higher education institutions.

The 2009 - 2013 executive team includes Reija (as above), Pedro Campos, Assistant Professor, University of Porto/ Department of Methodology and Information Systems in Statistics, Portugal and Sharleen Forbes, General Manager, Statistics Education & Research Unit/Adjunct Professor in official statistics at the School of Government, Victoria University, Wellington, New Zealand.   Present Advisory Board members come from Argentina, Finland, Israel, New Zealand, Singapore and Slovenia . 

At October 2011, ISLP had 22 Country Representatives within Africa, 12 in Asia, 30 in Europe, 13 in Latin America, 2 in North America, and 3 in Oceania.

Background

The mission of the International Statistical Literacy Project (ISLP) is to support, create and participate in statistical literacy activities and promotion around the world.

To facilitate communication between many countries and projects, ISLP supports a proactive website, which has become a forum where those interested in acquiring or providing statistical literacy can meet (in a virtual sense), exchange needs, information and resources, and learn to disseminate statistical literacy in their communities.

To make the mission of the ISLP possible, the webpage was converted to a Wiki environment, accessible to every member of the IASE to be active participants in the forum. Activities and editing can be done by anyone after login. 

Core Objectives

The International Statistical Literacy Project has as its main objective to contribute to statistical literacy across the world, among young and adults, in all walks of life.

Details

The ISLP is comprised of several projects, each of them focused on one area of statistical literacy. Each project is coordinated by expert volunteers) who for instance highlight news, compile resources, maintain a web page for their project and execute activities dedicated to increase statistical literacy in their area of expertise. The ISLP Director oversees all the projects and initiates statistical literacy activities that involve all of them and the world community. 

Results

Several actions have taken place: (a) promotion of national statistical literacy programs in  as many countries as possible; (b) promoting the use of international resources via books such as e-books, newsletter and meetings; (c) using the wiki web site as the vehicle of communication and dissemination of  ISLP activities and (d) organizing statistical literacy competitions. The main idea of the ISLP project is to develop models that can be exploited in the member countries. Action in accordance with each country´s infrastructure is important. Hence operational models should be applicable to both developed and developing countries.

The ISLP is a vibrant and active project.  It disseminates its resources on the ISLP web page (articles, references, bibliographies, portals, websites, tutorials, etc.) to special users’ groups. These include resources for:

• Adults learners and educators
• Articles with Statistics
• Assessment of Stats Literacy
• Census for Children
• Definitions of Stats Literacy
• General Resources on Stats Literacy
• Media and Journalist Training
• Statistical Offices/Training and Projects
• Teachers/Resources and Training