Abstract

Responsible citizens in modern democracies need to become familiar with data and achieve competencies from data science in order to handle the amount of data presented by different news sources and make informed decisions on different levels; this is particularly urgent in the context of climate change and unexpected environmental catastrophes. The aim of the Erasmus + Project EduS4EL (Educational Strategies for Environmental Literacy) is to foster data science competencies and data literacy of young students. More precisely, the main overall objective of the project is the development of educational and training activities aimed at promoting behavioral changes of individual and collective choices/preferences and consumption habits through innovative strategies and methodologies applied to environment and climate goals. The specific objective is to raise awareness - among Students in secondary school - of the critical, competitive and aptitude factors of Environmental Literacy.
After a brief description of the project, typical school interventions are described in detail: The chosen approach is experience-based, in the sense that students have to work on their own with data about environmental phenomena using statistical instruments provided by CODAP (Common Online Data Analysis Platform) and thus make their own discoveries about melting glaciers, rising sea levels, CO2 emissions, etc. They learn to explore data provided by trustworthy sources and acquire familiarity with them.
They also acquire decision making experience under risk based on accumulated data from their own choices working with lotteries embedded in plugins (see https://codap.xyz). Here they also work with the data which they produce while making choices/decisions, which are collected in CODAP tables.
Results of school interventions are presented and discussed.