From Guided Exploration to Possible Adoption: Patterns of Pre-Service Social Studies Teacher Engagement with Programming and Non-Programming Based Learning Technology Tools
Abstract: Social studies teachers are being asked to teach data literacy, defined as the ability to read, analyze, interpret, evaluate, and argue with data and data visualizations. State standards are encouraging them to have students learn via inquiry where they analyze data and build their own visualizations. However, few social studies teachers have had opportunities to learn much about data literacy. Additionally, analyzing data and creating data visualizations requires technological tools many of which teachers are unlikely to be familiar. In this paper, we use participatory design methods to understand the needs of social studies around technologies for data visualizations. We describe a participatory design session where pre-service teachers used a programming-based professional visualization tool (Vega-lite), a non-programming based pedagogical visualization tool (CODAP), and a purpose-built visualization tool whose design was informed by earlier design sessions with social studies teachers (DV4L). Although most pre-service teachers preferred the purpose-built tool, the justification provided painted a more nuanced picture. Some make a distinction between what they would use as teachers to produce class materials versus what they would want students to use to develop their computational skills while keeping them engaged. We use the Technology Acceptance Model to categorize the pre-service teachers’ responses to predict future adoption in their classrooms.