Middle School Students' Informal Understandings of Personal Data: Data Literacy for a Datafied World

• In Event: Marriott Roundtable Session 5
  In Roundtable Session: Building Understanding and Theory With Data

Abstract

The phenomena of datafication—the process of using ever-present technologies to capture everyday activities and transmute them into digital records—necessitates new data literacies. In particular, students must be equipped to critically engage with and critique narratives of data objectivity. Drawing on interviews and focus groups with 17 students, this study analyzes student perceptions and understandings of their own activity monitor data. Overall, participants viewed the activity monitors as objective, often when their personal experience suggested otherwise. However, participants also demonstrated implicit and sophisticated understanding of the role humans play in constructing data when they manipulated their data records. These findings suggest that students can develop the skills of modern data literacy, but may not use and apply them without explicit instruction.

Authors

• Danielle Hagood, University of California - Davis

• Cynthia Carter Ching, University of California - Davis