Notice, Wonder, Feel, Act, and Reimagine as a Path Toward Social Justice in Data Science Education

Abstract

In this paper, we introduce Notice, Wonder, Feel, Act, and Reimagine (NWFAR) to promote social justice in data science (DS) education. NWFAR draws on intersectional feminist DS to scaffold critical perspectives towards systems of power and oppression and attend to students’ experiences in designs for learning. NWFAR adds three practices that are typically not emphasized in learning designs for DS: feel—engaging emotions and the physical body; act—challenging, inspiring, or informing others towards change; and reimagine—envisioning how data, data methods, and data technologies could pursue different problems, solutions, and perspectives. We illustrate NWFAR through two design-based research projects from prior empirical work. Through these two examples, we demonstrate what thinking with NWFAR could look like in practice and highlight future possibilities for learning. We conclude with a discussion that focuses on the reimagining dimension, in which we highlight social-justice oriented theories.

Keywords

• data science education
• data feminism
• critical data literacies
• social justice