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Drawing on previous research into the value of developing and sharing data stories on social media, we use this paper to examine how practitioners address a spectrum of interests and concerns in relation to their own data literacies within this media form. To do so, we analyzed 107 data story videos from TikTok and Instagram to explore what practices and communication techniques are apparent in social media data stories that exhibit features of data literacy. Through our analysis, we uncovered a series of digital storytelling techniques (e.g., speaking to the camera, using a green screen) that supported the creators’ data science practices and communicative goals. This study contributes to the discourse on social media's role in data storytelling and literacy, providing guidance for future research and implications for the design of new data literacy learning experiences.more » « lessFree, publicly-accessible full text available June 10, 2025
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As a creative endeavor, scientific research requires inspiration, innovation, exploration, and divergent thinking. Yet, in K-12 settings, it is often viewed as rigid and formulaic. MindHive is a web-based platform designed to facilitate student-teacher-scientist partnerships in research on human behavior. Features support research phases (e.g., question finding, study design, peer review, iteration), and their creative dimensions, including exploration, expressiveness, collaboration, and enjoyment. Interviews with teachers and students who used MindHive show how learners describe their experiences as creative agents. This work illustrates how educational technologies can broaden STEM participation by being authentic to methodical and creative aspects of STEM research.more » « lessFree, publicly-accessible full text available June 17, 2025
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Students are often tasked in engaging with activities where they have to learn skills that are tangential to the learning outcomes of a course, such as learning a new software. The issue is that instructors may not have the time or the expertise to help students with such tangential learning. In this paper, we explore how AI-generated feedback can provide assistance. Specifically, we study this technology in the context of a constructionist curriculum where students learn about experimental research through the creation of a gamified experiment. The AI-generated feedback gives a formative assessment on the narrative design of student-designed gamified experiments, which is important to create an engaging experience. We find that students critically engaged with the feedback, but that responses varied among students. We discuss the implications for AI-generated feedback systems for tangential learning.more » « less
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Open data programs have become increasingly established at national and local levels of government. While the degree of success these programs have had in achieving their objectives remains open to question, one factor that has been identified as important to any success is the role of open data intermediaries, individuals and organizations that help others to make use of open data. In this paper we investigate how people become engaged with open data, what their motivations are, and the barriers and facilitators program participants perceive with regard to using open data effectively. We interview participants from a variety of backgrounds with differing levels of experience and engagement with open data. Participants include students learning how to train others in open data techniques and tools; people who attend open data events and use open data for commercial or social benefit; and representatives from local government, municipal agencies and a civic tech non-profit. We identify pathways to successfully developing and nurturing a community of open data intermediaries, and make five recommendations for organizations planning and managing open data programs.
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Data and Social Worlds: How Data Science Education Supports Civic Participation and Social DiscourseFree, publicly-accessible full text available June 10, 2025
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Citizen science programs offer opportunities for K-12 students to engage in authentic science inquiry. However, these programs often fall short of including learners as agents in the entire process, and thus contrast with the growing open science movement within scientific communities. Notably, study ideation and peer review, which are central to the making of science, are typically reserved for professional scientists. This study describes the implementation of an open science curriculum that engages high school students in a full cycle of scientific inquiry. We explored the focus and quality of students’ study designs and peer reviews, and their perceptions of open science based on their participation in the program. Specifically, we implemented a human brain and behavior citizen science unit in 6 classrooms across 3 high schools. After learning about open science and citizen science, students (N = 104) participated in scientist-initiated research studies, and then collaboratively proposed their own studies to investigate personally interesting questions about human behavior and the brain. Students then peer reviewed proposals of students from other schools. Based on a qualitative and quantitative analysis of students’ artifacts created in-unit and on a pre and posttest, we describe their interests, abilities, and self-reported experiences with study design and peer review. Our findings suggest that participation in open science in a human brain and behavior research context can engage students with critical aspects of experiment design, as well as with issues that are unique to human subjects research, such as research ethics. Meanwhile, the quality of students’ study designs and reviews changed in notable, but mixed, ways: While students improved in justifying the importance of research studies, they did not improve in their abilities to align methods to their research questions. In terms of peer review, students generally reported that their peers' feedback was helpful, but our analysis showed that student reviewers struggled to articulate concrete recommendations for improvement. In light of these findings, we discuss the need for curricula that support the development of research and review abilities by building on students’ interests, while also guiding students in transferring these abilities across a range of research foci.more » « less
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We explored the COVID-19 pandemic as a context for learning about the role of science in a global health crisis. In spring 2020, at the beginning of the first pandemic-related lockdown, we worked with a high school teacher to design and implement a unit on human brain and behavior science. The unit guided her 17 students in creating studies that explored personally relevant questions about the pandemic to contribute to a citizen science platform. Pre-/postsurveys, student artifacts, and student and teacher interviews showed increases in students’ fascination with science—a driver of engagement and career preference—and sense of agency as citizen scientists. Students approached science as a tool for addressing their pandemic-related concerns but were hampered by the challenges of remote schooling. These findings highlight both the opportunities of learning from a global crisis, and the need to consider how that crisis is still affecting learners.more » « less
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Abstract Data‐art inquiry is an arts‐integrated approach to data literacy learning that reflects the multidisciplinary nature of data literacy not often taught in school contexts. By layering critical reflection over conventional data inquiry processes, and by supporting creative expression about data, data‐art inquiry can support students' informal inference‐making by revealing the role of context in shaping the meaning of data, and encouraging consideration of the personal and social relevance of data. Data‐art inquiry additionally creates alternative entry points into data literacy by building on learners' non‐STEM interests. Supported by technology, it can provide accessible tools for students to reflect on and communicate about data in ways that can impact broader audiences. However, data‐art inquiry instruction faces many barriers to classroom implementation, particularly given the tendency for schools to structure learning with disciplinary silos, and to unequally prioritize mathematics and the arts. To explore the potential of data‐art inquiry in classroom contexts, we partnered with arts and mathematics teachers to co‐design and implement data‐art inquiry units. We implemented the units in four school contexts that differed in terms of the student population served, their curriculum priorities, and their technology infrastructure. We reflect on participant interviews, written reflections, and classroom data, to identify synergies and tensions between data literacy, technology, and the arts. Our findings highlight how contexts of implementation shape the possibilities and limitations for data‐art inquiry learning. To take full advantage of the potential for data‐art inquiry, curriculum design should account for and build on the opportunities and constraints of classroom contexts.
Practitioner notes What is already known about this topic
Arts‐integrated instruction has underexplored potential for promoting students' data literacy, including their appreciation for the role of context and real‐world implications of data and for the personal and social relevance of data.
Arts‐integrated instruction is difficult to implement in school contexts that are constrained by disciplinary silos.
What this paper adds
Descriptions of four data‐art inquiry units, which take an arts‐integrated approach to data literacy.
Examples of the synergies and tensions observed between data literacy, technology, and the arts during classroom implementation in four different schools.
Reflections on the role of school contexts in shaping disciplinary synergies and tensions.
Implications for practice and/or policy
Arts‐integration offers opportunities for data literacy learning.
Consideration of the unique resources and constraints of classroom contexts is critical for fulfilling the promises of data‐art inquiry learning.
There is a need to develop school support specific to arts‐integrated data literacy instruction.