Self-efficacy of Data Literacy among Primary and Secondary School Teachers in Guangdong Province

Abstract

The application of educational big data provides new basis for teachers to improve teaching and promote student development. However, there are still many challenges in using data to solve complex educational problems. Teacher data literacy has become the key to transforming educational data into effective teaching strategies. The study sought to gain a better understanding of the current state of primary and secondary school Teachers self-efficacy of data literacy and put forward some suggestions for teacher data literacy training. This study used a quantitative methodology. 813 primary and secondary school teachers from Guangdong Province, China, completed a questionnaire on self-efficacy of data literacy. (1) Primary and secondary school teachers reported significantly high levels of self-efficacy in data literacy (mean=3.624). Among the dimensions, the data awareness and ethics dimension had the highest self-efficacy (mean=3.738) and the data research dimension had a lower self-efficacy (mean=3.358). (2)There were significant differences in the primary and secondary school teachers’ self-efficacy of data literacy with different ages, educational backgrounds, and school locations. Primary and secondary school teachers generally recognized the importance of data literacy training. Older teachers who worked in rural schools and had low levels of education have the lowest level of self-efficacy for data literacy. For primary and secondary school teachers' low level of data analysis skills and weak data transformation strategy ability, teacher data literacy training adopts an embedded teamwork approach, integrating multiple resources to build a data team, integrating big data technology throughout the entire teaching process, and helping teachers to use new data and technologies to understand students' needs in a timely manner, to select teaching methods, and to solve real-world problems. It makes data literacy the foundation of teachers' teaching and promotes the development of all students.