Postcards From the Bronx: Students Redefine What a Healthy Place Is Through Justice-Oriented Data Art

• In Event: Data Literacy in Context: Culturally Oriented and Place-Based Learning Through Data

Abstract

In seeking to understand the health and resources of communities, decisions about what data to track and represent, particularly those made without a community’s input, can lead to misrepresentations that perpetuate inequities. How might arts-based methodologies such as photovoice and counternarrative engage students with critical data literacies around the topic of healthy places ( ?
We partnered with a middle school math and ELA teacher and an art and physical education (PE) teacher at a parochial urban school in the northeastern U.S. We met regularly throughout the academic year to co-design a 7-day unit about healthy neighborhoods, which the teachers then implemented with their 24 eighth-grade students. The unit was guided by the
Bell, 2019; Wang & Burris, 1997)
We draw on a critical data literacies perspective, which views data as situated in a social
context and explicitly challenges the notion of data as neutral (
et al., 2013; Bhargava et al., 2015; D’Ignazio & Klein, 2020). We investigated how engaging
with data through the arts might broaden students’ understanding of data, facilitate connections
Boyd & Crawford, 2012;
Phillip
between personal and community-level data, and engage them with issues of equity and justice
(Phillip et al., 2013; Bhargava et al., 2015).
question, ‘What is a healthy place?’. In the unit, students explored interactive maps (data2go.nyc, healthyplacesindex.org) and analyzed bivariate relationships using CODAP (codap.cocord.org), examining factors that affect community health such as air quality, access to healthy foods, and access to parks, and making informal inferences. Ultimately, students contributed content to a project website and performed their creative writing for a guest audience. Data sources included classroom observations, student artifacts (graphs, creative writing, photography), and semi-structured interviews with two students and two teachers following the implementation.
Preliminary thematic analyses showed students thinking critically about the impact of defining a construct such as ‘healthy place’ through data. One student reflected that such labels can “make others look better than the rest [...] give people second thoughts of moving somewhere because studies say the place is dangerous.” Students produced counternarratives about healthy places through art. They drew maps and photographed social indicators of their communities, such as their neighborhood deli or the homes of family members. Neighborhood photo walks further represented the importance of indicators that were not included in public data such as social gathering spaces, quality of sidewalks, or urban flora. Finally, students demonstrated evidence of a justice-oriented purpose and point of view in their creative writing by challenging single stories about their communities. Students challenged perceptions of their community as a dangerous place to avoid, described both needs and assets of their communities, or recognized people who are often overlooked such as workers who help keep their streets and parks clean.
This study demonstrates the potential of arts-based methodologies to engage students in
critical data literacies. It has further implications for how participating in a place-based data art
curriculum can help students see themselves as data producers, able to represent and potentially
advocate for their communities through data.

Authors

• Anna Amato, New York University

• Camillia Matuk, New York University

• Veena Vasudevan, University of Pittsburgh

• Kayla DesPortes, New York University

• Megan Silander, Education Development Center, Inc.

• Marian Tes, New York University

• Ralph Vacca, New York University

• Peter Jacob Woods, Massachusetts Institute of Technology