Stimulating (Open) Data Literacy at the Basis of Society: Approaches for Active Learning and Teaching to Young Children

Children in the primary educational level learn about fundamental reading, writing and mathematics skills as a basis for future learning. In some European Union countries, they are also taught basic informatics and computer usage. However, only a few efforts are made to start teaching them about (open) data literacy. When teaching about data, multiple stages of the data value chain can be tackled, adapted to children’s capabilities; from data production or collection to data usage or impact. Such teaching can be more theoretical, with already prepared examples, or a complete hands-on experience, where the data is collected from the environment, further analyzed, visualized and the conclusions about data are made. In this paper, we will present the currently available research on the approaches to teaching children about data. We will also discuss the potential benefits and the main issues impeding such an effort. Finally, we will propose the way forward for informal active learning about data for lower-level primary school children, based on the hands-on workshops using environmental data.