Just Futures: Sociotechnical Imaginaries in Data Science Education

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session 12
  In Roundtable Session: Perceptions, Frames, and Futures: Interrogating Policies and Programs

Abstract

Images of a data-driven future have led to calls to incorporate data science education (DSE) into the K-12 curriculum. DSE has been justified on multiple grounds, but less attention has been paid to how DSE efforts might also be guided by collective imaginations around big data, the forces that make up data technologies, and widespread calls for social justice. Drawing on science and technology studies (STS), this paper explores how various social actors envision the role that teaching data science can or cannot play in promoting access, equity, and agency for traditionally marginalized groups. Findings suggest new directions for guiding, critiquing, and reimagining DSE while promoting an underutilized approach for studying the social imagination in education.

Author

• Lee Melvin Madayag Peralta, Michigan State University