Review of Angela Laflen’s Critical Data Storytelling in the Composition Classroom

Increasingly, we understand and navigate the world via dataCied ways of knowing.Online activities are transformed into big data, which is presented back to us in stories and arguments.In this process, data shapes our thinking.This is the starting point for Angela LaClen (2025) in her book Critical Data Storytelling in the Composition Classroom (Utah State University Press).Through our online activities, we are building a stock of "previously unimaginable quantities of data" (p.187) that is tracked and analyzed, that is used to tell stories and build arguments, and that stokes AI.LaClen contends that the use of data, especially numerical data presented in visual formats, is a powerful form of multimodality and that the development of critical data literacy skills should be a priority for instructors in multimodal writing classes.In Critical Data Storytelling, LaClen's concern, then, is not whether professors should allow students to use generative AI in the writing process (a frequent focus of discussion) but on the development of students' critical data literacy skills, given the ubiquity of data and dataCied arguments.Her central point is that writing instructors should prioritize critical data literacy, creating a bridge between academic skills and the everyday skills students need to move critically through dataCied environments.To support instructors who are beginning the journey, she provides sample writing assignments throughout the book and a chapter focused on assessment.For me (a writing instructor grounded in traditional academic literacies), LaClen's book provides a good stretch, showing how to centre the data literacy skills that instructors and students urgently need in a world permeated with mis-and disinformation.