Boosting Data Science Teaching and Learning in STEM is a project that seeks to improve teachers’ and students’ “data fluency,” which includes understanding sources of data, structuring data for analysis, interpreting representations of data, inferring meaning from data, and explaining data and findings to diverse audiences.
This project is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and brings together WestEd and their proven Making Sense of SCIENCE teacher professional learning model and The Concord Consortium with their open-source, user-friendly Common Online Data Analysis Platform (CODAP) learning tool.
The goals of the project include the creation of teacher professional learning modules that engage middle school teachers in data-rich learning, along with cases of classroom practice that illustrate teaching and learning progressions in data science for middle school students.
The project will also have a strong research focus which will clearly articulate the knowledge and skills teachers require to support students in achieving data fluency in mathematics, science, and computer science in grades 5–9, the common roadblocks that students face as they progress toward data fluency, and an effective model of professional learning that supports teacher and student data fluency.