Constructing Visualizations to Investigate Plate Tectonics: Lessons for Visualization Education from an Earthquake Activity

Authors

Abstract

Although data visualizations are increasingly present in school curricula, students typically encounter ready-made charts rather than creating their own. Even when opportunities for construction exist, they often rely on template-based tools that require learners to choose among predefined chart types instead of making explicit representational decisions. In this paper, we report on the design and implementation of a learning experience in which middle school students used the programming tool PlayData to construct visualizations from an earthquake dataset as a way to investigate plate tectonics and engage with data practices. Drawing on classroom video recordings and students' projects from a summer workshop, we examine the questions students posed, the representations they created, and the discussions that emerged. We observed that visualization construction supported learners' epistemic agency and that rich discussions emerged from visualizations that had not been anticipated by the activity designers, including aspects such as data provenance and measurement practices. However, creating a visualization did not automatically lead students to interpret it, suggesting that these activities require deliberate support to move from representations to explanations. We discuss affordances and challenges of open-ended visualization activities and argue that visualization creation and ready-made visualizations may support complementary learning goals.