Data Literacy and young children : Design suggestions for a game intended to teach data literacy to children 8-10 years of age

Abstract: In todays' society, one encounters different visualizations of data on an everyday basis and the ability to understand data has become one of the most sought-after skills on the job market. It is, therefore, no surprise that OECD (The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) has included data literacy in their 2030 Learning compass. Data literacy is defined by the OECD as the ability to analyze, explore, read and argue with data. Since this is such an important skill and becoming more important as society embraces data in various ways, children must learn this in school, so that they are not left behind in the future data-driven society. There have been attempts on how to implement and teach the skill of data literacy for children aged 10 and onward. However, data literacy is still a new field of research and most earlier studies have been on adults and university students. One report written by Bengtsson et al. (2021) proposes an educational game, “The Rescue of Dataville”, which aims at teaching data literacy to children aged 10-12. This thesis will build upon and adapt their work to better suit a younger age group, children aged 8-10. Earlier research indicates that younger children do have the ability to understand some visualizations of data. To do this, the current research regarding abilities required to acquire data literacy as well as research in educational psychology, UX design, cognitive science, and the Swedish curriculum was obtained. In-depth semi-structured interviews with children aged 8 -10 and teacher students were conducted to get an understanding of what data literacy capabilities the children have. These interviews were transcribed and analyzed via the thematic analysis approach. Four themes emerged: Definition of difficult terms, Need for a data mini-game, Need for a new character, and Easier exercises. Based on these themes design changes were proposed. The design proposals were then validated via a survey sent out to teachers. The answers from the survey show promising results and indicate that the design proposals are appropriate for the intended target group. However, the current covid-19 pandemic resulted in a very small sample size, hence a bigger more thorough study should be conducted to further validate the results found in this report.