Bridging the data literacy gap

How data literate do students believe they are? What needs to change to give young people more confidence in this area? How can businesses help guide and inform changes to improve data skills amongst students?

These are some of the big questions Helena Schwenk explores this week with Ferdinand Doepel, Head of Economics and Business at Trinity School in the UK.

In the podcast, Helena and Ferdinand touch on why some subjects, such as maths and physics, are seen as being closely related to data but others, including English, aren’t. They also discuss how the UK education system could be tweaked to include a more data-focused curriculum – and the practicalities of employing some of these changes when schools and their staff are already feeling stretched to the limit.

Listen to the podcast.

Looking for more on the subject?

If you want more on this topic, check out our recent podcast with Adah Parris as well as Exasol’s D/NATIVES report [PDF], which dives even deeper into the issue of data literacy in the generation coming of age today.

Brent Dykes, author of Effective Data Storytelling: How to Drive Change with Data, Narrative, and Visuals, has written a great piece on the subject, explaining how data literacy in the next generation is central to the goal of having self-serve analytics across the organization. Read his article here.

And for something a little lighter, check out this short clip of Arthur Benjamin’s 2009 TED talk in which he offers a bold proposal on how to make math education relevant in the digital age.