National Science Foundation grant gives Middle Tennessee State University opportunity to bolster data science instruction

A group of professors at Middle Tennessee State University will be leading the charge to bolster the abilities of local middle school STEM teachers to teach data science thanks to a $3 million, five-year grant awarded by the National Science Foundation.

According to an article on Middle Tennessee State University’s website, Dr. Seth Jones, one of the faculty members involved in the grant project, was quoted explaining the importance of data science instruction, saying, “Data are everywhere. New technologies are creating more data and new forms of data every day, and people are increasingly being asked to use data to inform their understanding of the world around them…. Because of this, it is critical that schools support students to develop competencies in generating, analyzing, critiquing and making claims with data. Data science and education scholars and educators must work together to understand the important ideas students need to learn about and generate knowledge about how to best support students’ learning in and out of schools.”

The lead faculty member on the grant project is Dr. Gregory Rushton, who serves as the director of the Tennessee STEM Education Center at Middle Tennessee State University. Along with Dr. Jones, an associate professor in the College of Basic and Applied Sciences, the group’s members include Dr. Keith Gamble, an economics and finance professor within the Jennings A. Jones College of Business and the director of the Data Science Institute at Middle Tennessee State University, and Dr. Kevin Krahenbuhl, who directs a program within the College of Education.

Dr. Rushton explained that the group’s plan and hope is to bring more awareness to data science and help instruction for it to become more widespread in the community. He said, “As our teachers and partner districts develop this instruction, our research on teachers’ changing ideas, practices and leadership will have the potential to contribute to both practitioner and researcher communities. We envision that this program can itself become a model for supporting and scaling data science education for other districts and universities to make use of and that our findings on teacher learning and leadership will be a much-needed contribution to the field’s research and practice.” 

Dr. Gamble is hopeful that the project will help build a pipeline of interest into data science careers: “It will help us reach more students before they enter college by training secondary school teachers in data science and supporting them as leaders in their school systems. We anticipate that this grant will result in more students in Middle Tennessee being prepared for advanced training in data science and the data-driven jobs of the future,” he said.

The grant awarded for this project is one of the largest the school has received in recent history, and the project will also be bolstered by a $700,000 NSF CAREER grant for data science education research that Dr. Jones earned personally, which he is contributing to this project.

For more information about Middle Tennessee State University, visit the school’s website.