PIs: Michelle Wilkerson-Jerde, Tapan Parikh, Joseph Polman, Victor Lee
Tufts University
Award Details
This project focuses on a workshop exploring the application of data science to K-12 education. It is motivated by the importance that reasoning with data has in today’s world.
The workshop is entitled Data Science, Learning and Youth: Connecting Research and Creating Frameworks. Its objective is to move the educational implications of Data Science to the forefront of conversations among the cyberlearning research community. A large number of undergraduate and post-graduate programs are presently focusing on imparting data skills and computational reasoning. This workshop will extend this focus to K-12 education. It will bring together established and emerging scholars interested in Data Science Education from fields including Learning Sciences, Human-Computer Interaction and Computer Science, Mathematics and Statistics Education, Science Education, and Community Engagement and Citizen Science, and practitioners from K-12 settings. This workshop will foster new interdisciplinary collaborations and expose researchers interested in Data Science Education to relevant communities, literatures, and projects. The short term goal is to enable these communities to synthesize emerging findings, frameworks, and theories and better understand what tools, activities, and environments can support Data Science literacy. Our long term goal is to foster the development of a unified research community interested in Data Science Education. Direct outcomes of the workshop will include concrete plans to produce articles and synthesis documents focused on Data Science Education during the year immediately following the workshop. These documents will speak to three broad and complementary audiences: researchers, through the proposal of a special issue of a scholarly journal; practitioners, through two practitioner-oriented articles focusing on mathematics and science education; and the broader Cyberlearning community, through an online Synthesis Statement to be hosted by the Center for Innovative Research in Cyberlearning (CIRCL) resource website.