Doing Data Differently - Virtual Exhibition Launch

You are invited to the launch of a virtual exhibition of teacher designed postcards which represent aspects of literacy teaching.

Please arrive by 17:30.

The postcards were produced during a British Academy funded research project - Doing Data Differently - led by Professor Cathy Burnett and Professor Guy Merchant at Sheffield Institute of Education, Sheffield Hallam University.

Discussions about data in schools are usually linked to pupil attainment, data are represented using charts and graphs, and teachers rarely initiate data collection themselves or use it for their own purposes.

This project set out to do data differently.

Inspired by Dear Data, a creative postcard exchange by two information designers, this project explored how data might be used in creative, imaginative and personalised ways to explore primary teachers' everyday experiences of literacy teaching.

Seven primary teachers chose aspects of teaching literacy teaching that were important to them, collected data on those aspects, found ways of representing this data on postcards and discussed these at half-termly meetings. Their postcards provide insights into aspects of literacy teaching that are significant to them. They also raise questions about what might happen to teachers and to teaching - if the use of data in schools started to look and feel rather different.

At the launch you will learn about the project, see the exhibition and hear from some of the teachers involved.