As the Digital Education and AI for Advancing Pedagogy Hub at The Centre for Teaching Excellence, we are delivering the online course “Teaching Data in Primary Schools”. This professional learning course for primary teachers in Scotland will be hosted by CfTE Online, the Centre for Teaching Excellence’s digital platform at the University of Glasgow and will run from 28 September to 11 December 2026.
The course is designed to support teachers in developing practical knowledge, confidence and classroom approaches for teaching data literacy across the primary years. It is mainly self-paced, allowing participants to work through the online content flexibly, with additional synchronous sessions providing opportunities to discuss ideas, share experiences and learn with other teachers.
Across the course, participants will explore what data literacy can look like in primary education and how children can learn through questioning, collecting, organising, representing, interpreting and discussing data. The course uses the PPDAC cycle (Problem, Plan, Data, Analysis and Conclusion) as a practical framework for planning data investigations.
Participants will also explore physical and visual representations of data, practical investigations, familiar and real-life contexts, and cross-curricular approaches. Activities and examples have been designed for use across the full primary school context and can be adapted for different ages, stages and classroom settings.
Teachers who complete the course and required activities will receive the Data Literacy for Primary Teachers digital badge in recognition of their professional learning.
No specialist background in data science or statistics is required.
Interested in taking part?
Places on the course are limited. At this stage, we are inviting teachers to register their interest. Completing the form does not confirm a place on the course. We will contact interested teachers with further information about places, enrolment on CfTE Online and course access.
Register your interest here: https://edinburgh.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_7PqfkANmsx6p9Fs
Shortened version of the link: https://edin.ac/4wWhTlZ
If you have any questions about the course, please feel free to contact the course facilitator, Mustafa Ciftcioglu at mciftcio@ed.ac.uk .
