“Not a Data Person” but Still Exploring: English Language Arts Teachers’ Experiences in Teaching Data

• In Event: Supporting Teachers to Engage in Meaningful Data Literacy and Data Science Practices Across Disciplines

Abstract

Objectives
Discomfort with data and statistical ideas and pedagogy has been well-documented for mathematics teachers (Koparan, 2015). As efforts to develop instruction with and about data appear across subject areas (Jiang et al., 2022), we can now consider how educators across subject areas are affected by data integration efforts. In this contribution, we report on trajectories eight middle-school English Language Arts (ELA) teachers followed in their comfort with teaching with data. The context for this project was a co-design endeavor to incorporate data visualizations of text, such as word frequencies, into ELA classes as supports for literary engagement and for data literacy development.

Perspective/theoretical Framework
We view teachers gaining proficiency in teaching with data as engaging in professional identity construction and negotiation (Thompson, 2023). Identity construction is contextual and cultural - the experiences, positionings, and activities in which one is situated provides differential access to resources that structure their identities (Nasir & Hand, 2008). By participating in an experimental program that integrated data literacy activities with ELA, teachers gained access to new resources and reframed/repositioned prior resources to support their negotiation of identities related to teaching with and about data.

Methods
Over an academic year, we worked together with teachers on a monthly basis to integrate data literacy and literary literacy. During a videorecorded, retrospective interview, we solicited participating ELA teachers’ reflections on their relationships with data. While self-report has limits, it provides a snapshot of one’s currently constructed identity and one’s life trajectory leading up to a specific timepoint (McAdams, 1993).

Data
Eight interviews lasting between 20 and 60 minutes were conducted in the final month of the 2024-2025 academic school year after teachers had met monthly in professional learning sessions with collaborating researchers and district leaders. We also videorecorded the monthly professional learning sessions in two districts.

Conclusions
Six teachers reported changes in how they viewed their capabilities with data and the utility of data in their existing work, with frequent mentions that word clouds were an especially comfortable onramp for working with data visualizations, even if they later preferred barcharts or other visualizations for classroom use. Several claimed to not be a “data person” or “numbers person” but still provided details and examples of how they frequently do use data in their teaching lives. The two teachers who already considered themselves “data people” saw an expanded and strategic role for data in ELA. We see negotiation of teaching and ELA identities alongside data identities, and find that teacher confidence can increase without requiring self-identification as a “data person.”

Significance
Data across the disciplines is a growing area of interest, and requires attention to what is asked of teachers as they integrate data work into their pedagogy. This work offers insights into the specifics of data identity formation in ELA contexts, but also supports broader work in how change, adaptation, and gradual identification in teacher identities may draw on existing resources and experiences.

Authors

• Nichole Nomura, University of Wyoming

• Daniela Gamboa Zapatel, Stanford University

• Victor R. Lee, Stanford University

• Sarah Levine, Stanford University

• Christine Bywater, Stanford University