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Presents research investigating youth data literacy at the public library. The Data Literacy with, for, and by Youth project is framed by principles of participatory design, and asks, how might an informal STEM learning environment such as the public library, support the development of the skills, knowledge, and dispositions that young people need for them to take charge of their data lives, from data creation to data use – to be, in short, data literate. The problem of how to approach something as complex as data literacy in the voluntary drop-in setting of informal, after-school sites of learning - the public library being one such place - guides this study. The aim of the project is to design, build, test, and evolve theory and practice around informal data literacy education alongside youth, with the goal of building a holistic, humanistic, and youth-oriented model of data literacy which incorporates social-awareness, critical approaches, and “goodness of fit” into STEM learning about data.
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This content will become publicly available on August 1, 2026
Neighborhood characteristics on environmental literacy in urban youth: a case from Detroit Metropolitan Area, USA
Urban youth are exposed to a myriad of conditions that may influence environmental literacy in their informal learning settings. In partnership with the Detroit Zoological Society's Education program, we implemented an environmental literacy questionnaire to 43 participants from ages 9–13. We investigated how place dependency, place identity, research competencies, empathy for wildlife, ecological knowledge – all components of environmental literacy using stepwise regression were influenced by social and environmental neighborhood characteristics in youth residing in the Detroit metropolitan area. While distance to park, road density, and impervious surface affected environmental literacy, social variables such as education attainment and housing burden were most important. Because environmental literacy is crucial to growing advocacy and promoting pro-environmental behavior understanding drivers that influence attitudes towards nature has ramifications for securing both an inclusive STEM workforce and sustainable future.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2140322
- PAR ID:
- 10658508
- Publisher / Repository:
- Cities
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Cities
- Volume:
- 163
- Issue:
- C
- ISSN:
- 0264-2751
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 106042
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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