Research Projects
Reasoning from Evidence
A research project of the School of Education.
Background
Social sciences address problems that are inherently complex. Problems are almost always multivariate; variables interact, and there are non-linear relationships between variables.
The Nuffield Foundation (http://www.nuffieldfoundation.org/ ) funded a project, Reasoning from Evidence, which has produced data visualisations to support the teaching and learning of topics in A-level Sociology. These visualisations are easy to use and they run in internet browsers so no special software is needed.
Findings
Curriculum materials include teacher notes on how the material might be used in class, questions the data can be used to answer, and a commentary highlighting some of the important features of the data.
Resources are available relating to the following topic areas
1) Education
2) Public Disorder of August 2011
3) Health
The project materials can be accessed through https://www.dur.ac.uk/smart.centre/nuffield/ .