Thinking With Data: Teaching Data Literacy Skills across the Curriculum

1. Thinking With Data:Teaching Data Literacy Skills across the Curriculum Mark van ‘t Hooft, Annette Kratcoski, Karen Swan, Phil Vahey, & Dale Cook Kent State University Research Center for Educational Technology E-Tech Ohio Conference, Columbus, OH February 2010

2. Overview • Why Data Literacy? • Project Goals and Objectives • Unit Background: Thinking with Data • Digital Tools and Thinking with Data • Sample Activity • Some Research Findings This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. ESI-0628122. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

3. Why Data Literacy? • “We use data every day—to choose medications or health practices, to decide on a place to live, or to make judgments about education policy and practice. The newspapers and TV news are full of data about nutrition, side effects of popular drugs, and polls for current elections. Surely there is valuable information here, but how do you judge the reliability of what you read, see, or hear? This is no trivial skill—and we are not preparing students to make these critical and subtle distinctions.” • -- Andee Rubin

4. Goals & Objectives • Develop a modular, interdisciplinary middle school unit, consisting of a series of four subject area modules that: • support deep student understanding of standards-based content and processes in four disciplines: Social Studies, Mathematics, Science, and English Language Arts. • use real-world data across the disciplines, allowing students to engage in key aspects of data literacy both within and across the disciplines. • are based on recent and robust findings in cognition and instruction, and specifically address the notion of transfer across the curriculum (PFL). • Integrate digital tools to support learning across modules. • Create a set of assessments that measure student growth in data literacy as well as unique disciplinary approaches to it.

5. Standards-Based Content

6. Unit Context: World Water Issues Water Use in the Tigris-Euphrates Basin (SS, Math, Science) and in the United States (ELA) "The Earth, with its diverse and abundant life forms, including over six billion humans, is facing a serious water crisis. All the signs suggest that it is getting worse and will continue to do so, unless corrective action is taken. The crisis is one of governance, essentially caused by the ways in which humans have mismanaged water.” -- World Water Development Report (United Nations, 2000)

7. Real-World Data

8. preparation telling application communication English Language Arts Mathematics Social Studies Science Pedagogical Approach: PFL Preparation for Future Learning • preparingstudents to learn in one curricular context (SS), • with formal learning occurring in another (Math), & • extending the PFL approach to include application (Science) & • communication activities (ELA).

9. Technology and Data Literacy Knowing how to use digital and connected technology has become an ever-increasing part of being literate, as technology has become the “pen and paper of our time, … the lens through which we experience much of our world” -- Warlick, 2006 Large generalizations about ‘digital kids’ and their affinity for new styles of learning have a pernicious consequence – they can blind us to the actual literacy gaps that exist in children’s use of digital media. If using digital tools well actually places cognitive demands on children that they need help with, we’d better attend to and address them…. We are beginning to recognize that the literacy demands of common media tools vary according to the purpose to which they are put. --Tally, 2007

10. Use of Digital Technology in the Modules What we could/should use vs What the reality of school imposes How do we deal most effectively with this tension, without shortchanging learners? How much choice can/should we provide as part of the basic unit? Or should this just be a consideration for module extensions? What are the literacy demands that the use of digital technologies for learning puts on students?

11. Use of Digital Technology in the Modules Emphasis on simple tools (for a variety of reasons, including access and scalability) • Internet-based materials (including all lesson plans and related materials such as data sets, videos, flash animations, digital maps, reference materials…) • Word processor • PowerPoint for content delivery • Spreadsheets

12. Fostering Data Literacy Across the Curriculum • Requires: • input from across the disciplines, allowing each teacher to remain a content expert • but not imposing responsibility for teaching a new discipline (data literacy) on teachers • Our approach: • Investigate a complex, engaging, real-world problem • Social Studies sets the context • Math is used for quantitative analysis (proportional reasoning) • Science investigates the context from a scientific perspective, building upon analyses conducted in math • ELA has students explore issues emerging from the data and communicate positions regarding these

13. Data Literacy KSAs

14. An Example http://www.rcet.org/twd/index.html

15. Sample Activities • Social Studies: 2. Water in the Middle East • Math: 4. What is Fair? • Science: Science Challenges 1 and 2 • (ELA: 1.1 Data)

16. Science Challenge How does irrigation affect the soil? • Challenge Questions: • Which country depends the most on irrigation? • Put the countries in rank order based on the percentage of irrigated land with salty soil. • Which country has the most salty soil with a severe salinity problem? • What do you think the relation is among rainfall, irrigation, and salty soil problems?

17. FLOOD PLAINS RAINFED AGRICULTURE IRRIGATED LAND DESERT LAND - SYRIA DESERT LAND - IRAQ Science Challenge #2: What leads to salt runoff in the rivers? • Challenge Questions: • Where is it most/least salty? • What types of land are near the most and least salty parts of the river? • What do you think is causing these problems?

18. Some Research Findings Are teachers able to effectively implement the TWD modules? Yes, as long as there is sufficient administrative support and associated professional development.

19. Some Research Findings Do students who engage in the TWD modules increase their understanding of data literacy? Yes; students exposed to the TWD curriculum had a pre/post test gain score that was 3 points higher (~ 20%) than comparable students in the same school who did not engage with the TWD materials. When considering questions individually, student scores improved the most on items that required higher order thinking skills such as data interpretation across multiple tables and calculation of proportional data.

20. Some Research Findings Do students who engage in the TWD modules also increase their understanding of Math and Science? Yes; pre/post testing in Math and Science showed statistically significant gains in learning disciplinary content (but not as much as in data literacy gains).

21. Some Research Findings Can we expect, based on teacher and principal input, that this program can be scalable to a wide number of schools? Yes; with the exception of Social Studies, teachers felt that the TWD unit fit into the 7th grade curriculum. There were concerns about tensions created due to using PFL, especially at the end of the Social Studies module (lack of closure). A few teachers thought that some of the materials were too advanced for their students. Teachers expressed the importance of staff development, working as a team of teachers so each knew what the other three were doing in their modules, and alignment with content standards.

22. Conclusions (Lessons Learned So Far) • Data literacy is a part of all aspects of our lives, including education. It is important to teach, but not easy to do. • Teaching it across the curriculum may help in this matter. • Integrating digital tools creates opportunities for rich experiences for data literacy (variety of resources; data manipulation in multiple formats; media creation). • Integrating digital tools creates challenges (students’ and teachers’ technology literacy levels; access).

23. http://www.rcet.org