Setting Context: Contextualizing Unfamiliar Data in a 12th-Grade Classroom Using Spatial Data Visualization Technology

• In Event: Digital and AI Literacy in Learning

Abstract

A small but growing network of research has explored the possibilities and challenges of using spatial data visualization (or “SDV”) to support K-12 students’ understanding of disciplinary content and critiques of social inequality (e.g. Rubel et al., 2016). However, we have yet to understand how students may use SDV to contextualize data they’re using on a moment-to-moment basis, especially when that data is unfamiliar. In this preliminary analysis, I report on a microgenetic analysis of two 12th grade students’ classroom work using ArcGIS – a free, online mapping and SDV platform – to contextualize elements of an unfamiliar dataset. Their contextualizing practices illuminate possible roles that SDV technologies may play in supporting students’ understanding of, and subsequent analyses with, socioscientific data.

Author

• Jacob Barton, University of California - Berkeley