Skills and Dispositions for PFL: Promoting Data Literacy for Middle School Students in a Summer Camp

We designed a two-week summer camp to support Preparation for Future Learning (PFL) in data literacy by fostering both skills and dispositions. Middle schoolers create data visualization stories to address community-related issues they identified. Analysis showed growth in data visualization skills, self-efficacy, and recognition of data visualization’s value. We observed frequent student decision-making, suggesting agency as a key factor. This work prompts future studies on activating agency support PFL for data literacy.

Introduction

Data literacy, the ability to use data for everyday problem-solving is now widely recognized in K-12 education standards (NGSS HS-PS1-1, MS-PS3-1). To support students in applying data literacy beyond the classroom, we must consider how to foster Preparation for Future Learning (PFL)—the ability to transfer and adapt knowledge in new contexts (Bransford & Schwartz, 1999). Promoting PFL in data literacy requires more than building technical skills; it also involves cultivating dispositions such as self-efficacy and recognition of data’s value (Driscoll & Wells, 2012). Prior research suggests that engaging students with personally relevant, real-world issues can support both skill and disposition development—especially when students select meaningful topics (Bhargava et al., 2015), work with data connected to their lives (Lee et al., 2021), and communicate findings to authentic audiences (Barron et al., 2014). To explore how to support PFL in data literacy, we designed a two-week summer camp where middle school students led their own data projects. Students identified questions about their communities, conducted data investigations, created visualizations, and presented their findings to stakeholders. Our mixed-method evaluation showed growth in both skills and dispositions. We also observed that students frequently made intentional choices, revised plans, and negotiated ideas—suggesting their agency was activated throughout the process. Based on these findings, we propose that activating agency may be a key mechanism for fostering both skills and dispositions and therefore, an important design principle for supporting PFL in data literacy.