"Your Truth Isn't the Truth": Statistical Meaning-Making as Social Practice

• In Event: 31.068 - Multiple Perspectives on Out-of-School Learning

Abstract

This paper investigates emergent tensions between dynamically shifting participation frameworks that arise when local ‘truths’ contradict statistical evidence, presented as static ‘Truth’. We argue that engaging in statistical meaning-making as a social practice bridged one youth’s local experiences with those of the transgender community in an after-school social justice documentary filmmaking program. Microanalysis highlighted tensions that emerged when the youth was authored as holding truths counter to researched statistical data about the lived experiences of transgender people. We argue that engaging in this tension is an opportunity for statistical make-meaning, crucial for challenging the ways in which numbers are privileged as representations of ‘Truth’.

Authors

• Rishi (Shruti) Krishnamoorthy, New York University

• Sarah Catherine Radke, New York University

• Jasmine Y. Ma, New York University