“Once you’re teaching, you’re consumed with so much!”: A longitudinal study of factors influencing teachers’ beliefs about teaching critical data literacy in social studies

Critical data literacy is essential in our data-laden society and should be taught in social studies, where data visualizations are prevalent, and students are supposed to develop skills that will prepare them for engaged citizenship. However, research indicates that social studies teachers typically have little formal preparation and a low sense of efficacy related to teaching data literacy. This longitudinal study seeks to identify factors that influence beginning elementary and secondary teachers’ sense of efficacy related to teaching critical data literacy in social studies. Through surveys and semi-structured interviews, we examined the beliefs and reported practices of teachers from a pre-service course designed to help them learn about teaching critical data literacy through fieldwork and their first year of teaching. We were interested in how their beliefs about critical data literacy and their self-efficacy changed, whether they ultimately reported teaching critical data literacy as first-year teachers, and what sources of efficacy information seemed to influence their beliefs and practices. Our findings suggest that pre-service coursework can have a positive influence on pre-service teachers’ beliefs, but they are likely to encounter challenges coupled with inconsistent sources of efficacy information in the field that will undermine their commitments to teaching critical data literacy.