Is Data Literacy a Catalyst of Social Justice? A Response from Nine Data Literacy Initiatives in Higher Education

Raffaghelli, Juliana Elisa

doi:10.3390/educsci10090233

Cited by 29 publications

(29 citation statements)

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“…Less emphasis has been put on understanding how the students can be empowered by the use of data within the classroom and towards their communities (Raffaghelli, 2020a), though the debate around students' data usage is evolving at a steady pace (Willis, Slade, & Prinsloo, 2016). More recently, ideas such as data justice and data feminism have permeated the educational system in search of broader perspectives on data for the society and the educational institutions themselves (D'Ignazio & Bhargava, 2015;Raffaghelli, 2020b). Nonetheless, authors have advanced the need of approaching data literacy through a critical lens (Pangrazio & Selwyn, 2019), as well as through the adoption of Freire's perspective (Manca, Atenas, Ciociola, & Nascimbeni, 2017;Tygel & Kirsch, 2016).…”

Section: -Conceptual Lensmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This statement, however, has immediate implications: if education has to respond to the context of innovation and continuous transformation of data practices, and if several data approaches can be embraced, the educators' response could become fragmented. As a result, it would be difficult to promote creative and agentic ways of relating with data in education and the society (Raffaghelli, 2020b). In fact, the initial research around data literacy has focused a narrow and instrumental conception, which does not promote complexity in data practices .…”

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confidence: 99%

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Educators' data literacy

Raffaghelli¹

2022

Learning to Live With Datafication

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Data extraction and algorithmic manipulation have become increasingly frequent across the globe -hence the expression "datafied society". Initially perceived as an opportunity to innovate in several areas of human knowledge (Stephen-Davidowitz, 2017), data practices had unthinkable impacts. Race, gender and other vulnerable characteristics were made invisible, overrepresented and over-tracked by certain forms of data visualisation (Ricaurte, 2019). Automations based on machine learning have entailed perilous biases in the way they represent or neglect relevant cultural perspectives (Malik, 2020). Moreover, they have led to biases and users' lack of agency or even harm (Eubanks, 2018;O'Neil, 2016). In education, research has also highlighted forms of surveillance on children, teenagers and young adults with the aim of addressing their behaviours, emotions and cognition (Chi, Jeng, Acker, & Bowler, 2018;Lupton & Williamson, 2017;Prinsloo, 2020). The "platformisation" of learning and the monetisation of students' data are also pressing issues in the educational agenda. These problems were magnified by the intense and unprecedented use of digital technologies during the pandemic (Perrotta, Gulson, Williamson, & Witzenberger, 2020;Williamson, Eynon, & Potter, 2020).Against this backdrop, an activist counterculture emerged (Baack, 2015) in which participants aim to uncover how surveillance is redistributing power through the participatory appropriation of data (Lehtiniemi & Ruckenstein, 2019). Expressions of this movement have manifest through the Open Government Data and Open Science (Lehtiniemi & Ruckenstein, 2019), as well as with independent collectives reacting to the oppression of surveillance, including forms of disconnection and "hacking" the system (Pybus, Coté, & Blanke, 2015). Overall, data activists' search for recognition, awareness, redistribution of symbolic and material power aims at emancipation. As Milan and van der Velden (2016) argue, data circulates generating imaginaries, discourses and practices, which they refer to as "data epistemologies". Despite the universal circulation of metrics and quantification, the concept of data epistemology spots the contextual and diversified nature of data practices in response or reaction to datafication. According to these same authors, the activists that search for data appropriation to express diversity and empowerment embrace a proactive data epistemology . Instead, the activists whose goal is to uncover injustice and condemn malpractice stick to a reactive data epistemology. In each case, the quest for equal representation, voice and self-determination leads to an ideal known as fair data culture The term "epistemology" refers too widely to a theory of knowledge in the context of philosophy, though it is apparently used "lato sensu" by Milan and van der Velden. From an

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Section: -Conceptual Lensmentioning

confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

Educators' data literacy

Raffaghelli¹

2022

Learning to Live With Datafication

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“…It follows from this definition that digital literacy is crucial for the harmonious participation of individuals, empowering them in their life in society as consumers but also as creators of digital technology in a conscious, critical and intentional way, which is also vital for sustainable development [50,74,[103][104][105].…”

Section: Digital Literacy and Inclusionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, in this context of digital change, COVID-19 has also amplified previously existing inequalities [21,26,44,50]. As Raffaghelli [50] (p. 3) states,…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Digitainability—Digital Competences Post-COVID-19 for a Sustainable Society

Sá¹,

Santos

Serpa

et al. 2021

Sustainability

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The digitalization of societies, accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, is an unstoppable process. This paper seeks to answer the question: what post-COVID-19 digital competences are needed for a sustainable society? It also aims to analyze the digitalization processes in education for shaping a sustainable digital society. A bibliographic search was performed on some of the most relevant international databases of scientific literature and the selected documents were analyzed through a content analysis. It is concluded that digital education has experienced a strong increase, reinforced by COVID-19, shaping the digital presence in all dimensions of life. However, it is not sufficient to assume that the new generations are naturally engaged in and can master digital social sustainability. The results demonstrate the importance of literacy and the unavoidable promotion of sustainability in a digital society. However, this digitalization of the educational process poses several challenges: it requires both software and hardware conditions, as well as digital literacy as a result of a complex of literacies. It also implies that teachers and students change their standpoints and practices with the attainment of new teaching and learning competences in order to fight the digital divide and to foster the widest possible social inclusion for the promotion of sustainable society—digitainability.

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“…Tuttavia, tali operazioni richiedono forme di alfabetizzazione sia da parte degli studenti che dei docenti (Wasson et al, 2016). Come rilevato da Raffaghelli (2020), tali capacità non possono essere solo tecniche, ma devono essere soprattutto critiche, nel senso della contestualizzazione sociale e politica dei dati prodotti, trattati e utilizzati con finalità sociali, istituzionali e politiche. Nel particolare caso dell'università, tale processo di alfabetizzazione potrebbe essere riconducibile a una riflessione che copre le singole pratiche d'aula, sia secondo la prospettiva della concezione del dato come contenuto educativo, sia come elemento a supporto di metodi educativi per il potenziamento dell'apprendimento degli studenti.…”

Section: Introduzioneunclassified