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Why do schools provide education? Educational theorist Gert Biesta addresses this difficult question by proposing that education involves three functions: qualification, socialisation and subjectification. Qualification aims to equip students with skills and knowledge. This dimension is often the most prominent in contemporary discussions. Socialisation, in turn, promotes the integration of youth into cultural and social structures, for example. Subjectification empowers students to view themselves as agents who can make choices and shape their own lives and their environment.

Data literacy education serves as a good example of how these functions are meaningful both collectively and respectively. Researchers at the Ģ��ֱ��, Department of Teacher Education, explored international research literature on the different educational purposes of data literacy education. These purposes included adapting students to data-rich environments in everyday life and data-related technical skills as a competency in various professional fields.

“A key finding was that data literacy education emphasises collecting and storing digital information in tables and diagrams, for example, for better representation and interpretation of scientific phenomena,” explains Postdoctoral Researcher Janne Fagerlund. “This enables students to ‘qualify’ and ‘socialise’ themselves for the competency roles expected of them.”

In some studies, data literacy education was more explicitly portrayed as empowering students, emphasising subjectification. This involved, for example, encouraging youth to be critical of surveillance and the collection of data about people, or to reflect on what kind of data traces they are leaving behind on social media. Students may also qualify themselves on such issues through a better understanding of the ethical and commercial aspects of the digital world. On the other hand, educating students to become “responsible and savvy data citizens” is an example of a mantra that can indicate very different educational aspirations: conforming to future role expectations or exercising critical data agency autonomously in one’s own current life. Both have significance.

Fostering young people's holistic growth in the digital world calls for conscious efforts from educators: building competencies, promoting integration and empowering self-determination. Some aims, however, may be overemphasised or even forgotten, both in the classroom and in public discussions. Data literacy is indeed an example of an educational topic in which instrumental skills threaten to become predominant. Less attention (and possibly less value) may then be given to educational goals that are less tangible or, for example, are more difficult to teach or assess directly.

Fagerlund concludes: “It is important to remember what school education is really all about: aiming to cultivate reflective youth who are prepared to lead a good life in their own way as part of the world.”

The peer-reviewed article is an open-access publication and available for reading: Fagerlund, J., Palsa, L., & Mertala, P. (2025). Exploration of domains of educational purpose in K-12 data literacy education research.

The research publication is part of the Movement for Data Literacy (MODALITY) project funded by the Research Council of Finland.