INVESTIGATING DATA LIKE A DATA SCIENTIST: KEY PRACTICES AND PROCESSES

Abstract

With a call for schools to infuse data across the curriculum, many are creating curricula and examining students’ thinking in data-intensive problems. As the discipline of statistics education broadens to data science education, there is a need to examine how practices in data science can inform work in K–12. To better understand how to frame data science practices in K–12, we synthesize literature about statistics investigation processes, data science as a field, and practices of data scientists. Further, we provide results from a phenomenological study of the work of data scientists. Together, these inform a new framework to support data investigation processes. We explicate the practices and dispositions needed and offer a glimpse of how the framework can be used to move data science education forward.