I started this series on the “methods of learning from data” (the phrase I have finally decided to use) because I thought K12 schools were missing an obvious opportunity. Partly, my motivation was prompted by the impact the coding advocates have achieved in gaining the support of the public and the interest of educators. The experiences of many students have changed as a consequence. While I value my own coding skills and the role the projects I have coded have played in my professional career, I still feel the broad role for coding some imagine lacks the evidence we should expect to make a drastic change beyond providing coding courses in high school. Put another way – computational thinking lacks credibility as a unique form of higher order thinking and I just don’t see the evidence that would warrant a drastic alteration of the curriculum. I think other tactics (e.g., writing across the curriculum) have demonstrated greater benefits in multiple content areas and other areas of emphasis (e.g., methods of learning from data) provide largely unexplored authentic activities for developing higher order thinking skills in multiple content areas.
As I have searched for similar positions, I found the data literacy emphasis that as far as I can tell was operationalized by library professionals. It seems to me that the big thinkers in the library community see the role of their profession more broadly than purchasing, recommending, and lending books and magazines. Librarians when describing the big picture suggest that they help others solve information problems. In developing the skills to accomplish this goal they might argue they help others become information problem solvers.
From this perspective, data literacy would represent an example of the development of the skills involved in solving problems based on the collection and analysis of data. What the methods of collection are will vary depending on the type of problem. What the data are will vary in the same way. The skills of analysis will be more consistent across both methods and data types.
I don’t think it is necessary for me to summarize the content from the Data Literacy Project. They have put considerable effort into both the background and the classroom suggestions. Here are several links you may want to explore.
How you teach data literacy – this is the School Library Journal that first caught my attention.
Creating data literate students (download the book)
Web site for the Data Literacy Project
