Abstract

At international level, the importance of official statistics is now recognised: they are essential for every citizen to be able to know and critically recognise the context in which they live, and to be able to make decisions, even in situations of uncertainty, on the basis of concrete, shared data.
The national statistical institutes, driven by the conviction that a society in which decisions are taken on the basis of objective data is a society in which democracy reigns, have endeavoured to make access to official data free and easily accessible to their citizens. Free access to statistical information is a means of ensuring the progress of a democratic society, but it loses its effectiveness if citizens are unable to read, interpret and analyse the data. So we were faced with a new challenge: not just disseminating data, but promoting it, getting to know it and making it understood, so that it is useful to the community, a good that has a strong potential impact on everyone's life.
This is why it can be very useful to acquire statistical and data-reading skills at school. Not so much to become statisticians in adulthood, but to learn to read and decode the world around us correctly.
Among the numerous projects aimed at developing statistical literacy in schools, this work aims to illustrate an innovative interdisciplinary teaching pathway designed to promote and develop the principles of active and conscious citizenship in schools, through research activities, the use of open data, the use of information technologies and the civic monitoring of European and national public funding.
The project, aimed at high-schools, develops numerical, statistical and civic education skills, as well as other cross-curricular skills such as critical thinking and problem-solving, teamwork, interpersonal and communication skills, by integrating them into the content of ordinary study subjects, in order to help pupils learn about and communicate, using journalistic techniques, how public policies, and in particular cohesion policies, operate in the places where they live.
Teaching is project-based, combining asynchronous learning moments typical of MOOCs (Massive Online Open Courses) with face-to-face facilitation activities led by the teachers themselves (previously trained ad hoc), group work and online interaction with the project team.
Pupils will therefore discover in class what data is used for, with the help of their teachers, in an interesting and informative journey into the world of figures, which will help them develop their ability to understand social, cultural and environmental developments thanks to the data provided by official statistics. What's more, they will be able to take part in a practical initiative, trying their hand at creating a communication product and putting their analytical skills and creativity to the test.