This paper reports on students' experiences of describing and representing variation in hypothetical data. Fifty-six students (8-9 years-old) experienced collecting and working with quantitative data for two years as part of a STEM education project. The task described here was an end-of-year survey question, with three parts about a hypothetical…

This paper explores the significance of schools' data infrastructures as a site of institutional power and (re)configuration. Using 'infrastructure studies' as a theoretical framework and drawing on in-depth studies of three contrasting Australian secondary schools, the paper takes a holistic look at schools' data infrastructures. In contrast to…

At the school level statistics begins with exploratory data analysis, or EDA. Statistical learning goes on to include statistical inference, which will be discussed in the second part of this article. In this article, the author will talk about EDA and CODAP. EDA can be thought of as looking for patterns in data using graphs and simple statistics…

This is the third in a series of articles describing CODAP and where it might be used to address content in the "Australian Curriculum: Mathematics" v9.0 (ACARA, 2022). We've talked before about model-ling and about statistics; this time, we'll talk about exploring probability using CODAP. As before, we have also prepared online pages…

In this paper, we propose that informal aspects of data science could be introduced in primary school. The International Data Science in Schools Project (IDSSP) framework for data science curriculum provides a guide for a data science curriculum aimed at upper secondary level. We analyzed synergies between the IDSSP framework and the current…

This is the first of four columns by Tim Erikson which introduces us to the Common Online Data Analysis Platform (CODAP). CODAP is a free, web-based software tool that your students can use for many types of tasks. This first column shows how CODAP can be used for mathematical modelling and where it might fit with the "Australian Curriculum:…

It seems uncontentious that policy development should be informed by evidence, and that researchers should be engaged to assess available evidence. In this paper, we tell the story of a Rapid Evidence Assessment (REA) about school exclusion, a task intended to inform a 'root and branch' policy review. Drawing on Carol Bacchi's 'What's the…

In response to a workforce crisis, Australia's early childhood education and care workforce strategy for the next decade, "Shaping our Future," was released in September 2021. This strategy was developed through a three-stage, 'top-down' process in which open consultation on pre-defined strategies was the final stage. Analysing data from…

In this article, we reveal the nature and effects of data infrastructures on the authorisation of data that represent students and educational practitioners, including how such data can misrepresent and govern educational policy and practices in sometimes problematic ways. To better understand the governance capacities of data infrastructures, we…

As part of a study investigating research productivity of sociology PhD students in Australia, an application to the federal government's Department of Education, Skills and Employment (DESE) aimed to establish a baseline count of completed sociology doctorates by university. It was anticipated that university totals might be different from PhD…

The higher education efficiency evaluation model using the data envelopment analysis method has interested many researchers. This paper uses bibliometric analysis on publications extracted from the Scopus database to provide a comprehensive overview of research publications on the measurement of higher education efficiency based on data…

In the last decade education has experienced a shift from privatization to commercialization. This paper argues that the commercialization of education has evolved more recently as a result of artificially intelligent corporate players, enabling forms of insights sales called 'Dark Advertising'. It unpacks how Dark Advertising are profiting from…

This research explores the perspectives of marketing students and educators about the Big Data courses in marketing education programs. It also examines drivers that predict interest on the part of marketing students in taking Big Data courses. Data was collected through interviews with 20 marketing educators, and a survey was completed by 480…

The past 20 years have seen the steady 'datafication' of school systems -- i.e. the rendering of key aspects of school practice into data that is digitally collected, processed and circulated. In contrast to assumptions of 'data-driven' schools as sites of more efficient and automated forms of data work, this paper examines the extensive human…

This paper describes the role of data and task context in young children's interpretation of and reasoning about data tables. A design-based descriptive study was conducted with fourteen 5-year-old children in their first year of formal schooling. A picture storybook provided the data context for a data modelling activity that focused on…