Exploring Data Science Through the Lens of Civics Education

This research study examines the potential of integrating student-driven descriptive investigations of complex multivariate civic datasets into middle school social studies classrooms. It uses a collaborative co-design process to develop data-rich experiences for the social studies classroom crafted to (1) deepen students' data literacy, (2) develop students' sense of efficacy in working with civic data sets, and (3) create learning experiences that connect data to local problems that have meaning for students and their communities. The project goal is to explore the synergies between data science and social studies education in creating a transdisciplinary space to promote transformative data experiences for students and deepen the foundational knowledge needed for students to engage productively with data. The team uses a mixed methods approach to generate the curriculum and examine how it works in practice. The team strategically iterates between qualitative and qualitative methods to support robust inference across all phases of the proposed research. The investigator and colleagues generate a collaborative research and design process to build learning experiences to intensively interrogate civic-data and build data science literacy for teachers and their middle school students. Together middle school social studies teachers, mathematics teachers, and project leadership co-learn and co-design 2-3 week a series of data investigations. The teachers implement these data investigations in their in social studies classrooms. During the school year, the professional development continues, and the research team studies the implementation, focusing on student data science learning, along with the data-based inferences that these students draw, and warranted arguments they make. The cycle then repeats. During year two, the summer workshop shifts to focus on analysis of student and classroom data and revision of the data investigation sequences for a second round of classroom implementation and testing for student outcomes. The project is led by a nationally recognized team of STEM and social studies education researchers, in close collaboration with social studies and mathematics teachers, and includes diverse student groups generally under-represented in the STEM disciplines. The Discovery Research preK-12 program (DRK-12) seeks to significantly enhance the learning and teaching of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) by preK-12 students and teachers, through research and development of innovative resources, models, and tools. Projects in the DRK-12 program build on fundamental research in STEM education and prior research and development efforts that provide theoretical and empirical justification for proposed projects. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.