This paper investigates dialogic learning as a pedagogical framework for designing critical data literacy (CDL) tools in K-12 education. We present Datafy, a research-through-design project, co-designed with three teachers, which enables students to collect and analyze real-world music data to create meaningful playlists. Through a classroom observation with 40 fifth-grade students and follow-up interviews with two teachers, we show how Datafy facilitated dialogic opportunities between tools, learners and teachers for data exploration, critical reflection, and collaborative meaning-making. We contribute to human-computer interaction (HCI) research by providing methodological insights that operationalizes dialogic learning and offering actionable design recommendations for integrating dialogic learning into CDL tool design. Beyond CDL, this work illustrates how HCI can bridge learning theories with interactive tool design and advance ongoing discourses on computational empowerment, learning technologies, and child–computer interaction.
Liu et al. (Thu,) studied this question.