We’ve usually got a research project running alongside Data Education in Schools. We’re interested to find out how we can teach data literacy more effectively, and how to make our events and materials more interesting and fun.
Research Team
The research team members are:
We also work with the Data Education in Schools team and our colleagues in Digital Skills Education.
How to take part
Teachers, if you are interested in taking part in our research projects, please email Judy.Robertson@ed.ac.uk.
Research information sheets and consent forms for teachers
Research information sheets and consent forms for parents/carers and learners
Current Research Projects
Teachers’ experiences of teaching data literacy
We want to find out how teachers get on with teaching data literacy, and how it fits in with your teaching approaches in other areas of the curriculum. If you’re a teacher who has signed up for our Data Literacy for Primary Teachers course or your school is part of the Internet of Things in Schools project, we may invite you to take part in this research. It is likely to involve taking part in interviews (around 30 minutes) or focus groups (around 60 minutes). We might also invite you to write a blog post or share slides which you have used in a presentation about your data literacy classroom work with us. Internet of Things in Schools teachers will also be invited to complete a survey about the work they do with their classes on the project.
Live Lessons
We want to find out what learners and teachers think of our Live Lessons series: Data Selfies, Defend the Rhino with Data Science and Plug in the Numbers. We work on this project with our colleagues at Digital Skills Education (Craig Steel and Daniel Devine). Learners – if you take part in one of these lessons, Craig and Daniel will ask you if you want to complete an online survey at the end. If you do, and you and your parents have filled in the Data Education in School permission form, Daniel will send us your answers afterwards. We’ll use your answers to help us design fun lessons in the future. Teachers – if you have signed up for your class to take part in one of these lessons, we may get in touch to ask you to complete a survey or take part in an interview. This helps us to make sure that the lessons are pitched in the right way for the age group, and cover interesting aspects of the curriculum. We might also ask for ideas for new topics, or your general thoughts about teaching data literacy.
Escape Rooms
Our colleague Kate Farrell has recently made some Escape Rooms lessons for teaching data literacy. We’ll be evaluating these lessons to find out what learners and teachers think of them in academic year 22/23.