Keywords
numeracy, quantitative literacy, literacy, liberal education, National Numeracy Network, AAC&U essential learning outcomes, Australian Curriculum general capabilities, ETS student learning outcomes, Google Scholar citation profiles
Abstract
This issue completes the first ten years of Numeracy. The purpose of this introductory editorial is to review what has happened to the journal in those ten years. In the twenty issues, Numeracy’s output has been 201 papers counting the one or two editorials per issue. More than 50% of the papers are full, peer-reviewed articles, including 13 papers in two theme collections. The others are peer-reviewed notes and perspectives, editor-reviewed book reviews (15% of the total), and a column by contributing co-editor, Dorothy Wallace. The current issue marks an upswing in the number of notes, and our first discussion/reply. The number of papers per year has been increasing (e.g., 66% more in the last three years than in the first three years). The download rate has increased from about 5,000 in the first two years to 5,000 in about 40 days now.
The editorial goes on to document two main outcomes. First, the journal is gaining an international reach: more than half the downloads occur outside the United States now, and the number of contributions from outside the United States has increased from 4 in the first five years to 15 in the second five years. Second, the across-the-curriculum nature of quantitative literacy is coming to the fore. The transdisciplinarity of QL is strikingly evident in this issue, which is discussed in some detail, especially how it conforms to the mission of the Association of American Colleges and Universities.
The editorial ends with some results from a small ad hoc study of Google Scholar Citation Profiles. The question was, of the profiles that used “numeracy” or “quantitative literacy” as keywords, what other keywords did those profiles use, and what were the source countries? The results show that (1) QL is very much an American term, (2) there is, metaphorically, a vast and interesting numeracy ecosystem out there for Numeracy to engage and serve, and (3) as we become more global, the transdisciplinary relevance of numeracy/QL will emerge even more.
DOI
http://doi.org/10.5038/1936-4660.10.2.1
Recommended Citation
Vacher, H. L.. "Ten Years, Twenty Issues, and Two Hundred Papers of Numeracy: Toward International Reach and Transdisciplinary Utility." Numeracy 10, Iss. 2 (2017): Article 1. DOI: http://doi.org/10.5038/1936-4660.10.2.1
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