Designing a sequence of activities to build reasoning about data and visualization

Our complex world requires multivariate reasoning to make sense of reality. Within this paper, we offer a sequence of activities designed to develop multivariate reasoning by explicitly connecting data and visualization. The activities were designed based on a hypothetical learning trajectory we conjectured for students with limited experience with multivariate visualizations. Drawing from evidence collected using these activities in a series of professional development sessions with in-service teachers, we find that the activities functioned as intended, and thus we promote these activities for developing students' multivariate reasoning at the secondary and post-secondary level. We detail specific challenges the teachers faced, and based on these results, offer our reflections and recommendations for curricula and teaching.