Education - Data Literacy

The Teaching and Assessing Data Literacy: Resource Guide for Supporting Pre-Service and In-Service Teachers was produced with support by the CEEDAR Center under the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs, Award No. H325A170003. David Guardino serves as the project officer. The views expressed herein do not necessarily represent the positions or polices of the U.S. Department of Education. No official endorsement by the U.S. Department of Education of any product, commodity, service, or enterprise mentioned in this website is intended or should be inferred. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and also does not necessarily represent the official views of Northern Arizona University or the American Institutes for Research.

Competence in data literacy is an essential skill for success in an increasing number of fields and a key soft skill that employers seek when making hiring decisions. Lessons in the Data Literacy Series can be used by university and school faculty and staff to teach students how to reliably identify, interpret, and communicate data. Each lesson reviews data interpretation, analysis, and/or presentation concepts in detail, and is written in an accessible manner to be used by teachers, instructors, and librarians from any field or background.

We began in 2010 as the Maine Data Literacy Project — a small group of scientists, education researchers, and educators from the University of Maine, the Schoodic Institute, and a handful of middle and high schools in Maine. We observed how students graph and reason about data, and identified key challenges to building data literacy in science and math classrooms. We developed and piloted teaching resources and strategies, many of which are shared in the Classroom link on this website. Today we continue to engage individually and collectively with teachers and students, and have joined efforts with other advocates for data literacy, including Tuva, education and research units at The University of Maine and Rutgers University, Schoodic Institute, Cary Institute, MDI Biological Laboratory, and others. We work together to bring data literacy tools and skills to middle, high school, undergraduate, and graduate students, and pre-service and in-service science and math teachers.

Amid a growing push for schools to better prepare young people to navigate a world awash in data, a team of scholars led by Stanford Graduate School of Education Professor Jo Boaler has introduced a groundbreaking tool for educators: “Big Ideas in Data Science,” a proposed set of standards for teaching data science to students in kindergarten through tenth grade.

Stanford Graduate School of Education

‘Teach Data Literacy: a guide for primary teachers’ is a resource developed by the Data Education in Schools team to support teachers to enhance opportunities for all to build the skills and habits of mind relevant to data problem-solving. University of Edinburgh.

Access a range of instructor-led and self-paced courses to develop your fundamental understanding of data, both in everyday life and within your organization. Take things further with advanced learning opportunities and assessments to receive our industry recognized, Certified Data Literacy certificate.

What is the Data Literacy Cube? Educators, consider using the My NASA Data Literacy Cubes to guide students’ exploration of graphs, data tables, and mapped images of NASA Earth science data (or other sources of Earth data). Leveled question sheets provide opportunities for students to connect with data, regardless of language proficiency or academic skill. These tools were created with the Next Generation Science Standards in mind. They help students develop their Data Analysis and Interpretation skills, as well as help them to recognize patterns, cause & effect, stability & change, and more!

Through the Lion King’s characters Timon and Pumba, gives kids in pre-school through third-grade age-appropriate lessons on the importance of protecting personal information online and what to do if people are targeted by cyberbullies. (Health World Education).

This project from the census bureau gives teachers lesson plans on how they can incorporate data from the census into mathematics, English, history geography, and sociology lessons for students in grades K-12. (Census Bureau)