The recent public availability of large-scale datasets, also known as big data, and digital visualization tools has ushered in new ways of telling stories about the social world. The three papers that comprise this dissertation collectively explore how both youth and young adults learn to engage in the interdisciplinary, representational practices that support becoming modelers, storytellers, and consumers of stories told with big data. The first paper is a literature review that introduces storytelling and modeling with big data as a new cultural activity and a rich design space for learning. The second and third papers draw on a corpus of observational studies and design studies of experimental teaching and dive deeply into interaction in each setting to understand participantsâ comparative, representational practices for assembling models with big data and dynamic visualization tools. The second paper compares three case studies of storytelling and modeling with big data: a professional big data storyteller from the public media and two groups of newcomersâmathematics and social studies preservice teachers in our design-based research studiesâperforming stories about global development trends with an interactive, big data visualization tool. The analysis of video records across cases found that getting personal with big dataâconnecting personal experiences to aggregate trends described in the modelâcan support telling stories about society that counter, challenge, or critique dominant or conventional social narratives. This work motivated the design study iteration reported in the third paper, which examined storytelling and modeling with big data in a personal context: Teenage youth in the public library were invited to create family data storylines about personal family mobility in relation to national census data trends. The third paper found that scaling personal histories to socioeconomic and historical issues represented by big data entails serious data wrangling to align the family story with the data and supports meaningful forms of learning about oneself, oneâs family, and society. Furthermore, locating a population that one identifies with or finding places of meaning in models is an important first step for engagement with big data interfaces.

This study explores the necessity and validity of including cultural competence as a dimension of the construct of quality teaching and classroom community. Through an analysis of existing measures, cultural competence was found to be missing across widely-adopted measures of teacher quality; in contrast, the literature on cultural competence in education, as well studies documenting the importance and validity of including cultural competence in measures of quality medical education, point to the importance of expanding the dominant construct of teacher quality to include aspects of cultural competence. In response to this need, this dissertation analyzes a new observation rubric, the Vision for Student Learning (VfSL). The VfSL is not a traditional, evaluative measure of teacher quality; instead, it is a formative measure of classroom community that scores classrooms based on student actions, rather than teacher actions. The VfSL is grouped into three dimensions: Safe, Brave, and Equitable Classrooms; Rigorous and Culturally Relevant Learning; and Perseverance to Goals. Using exploratory factor analysis and item response theory (IRT) models, this dissertation demonstrates that the VfSL is both reliable and valid as a measure of classroom community, providing initial evidence that inclusion of cultural competence in observation rubrics is both possible and desirable when used strictly to provide formative feedback. Furthermore, the factor structure of the VfSL empirically affirms the theoretically-driven design of the first two dimensions of the measurement instrument and provides evidence that the skills of building classroom culture and enacting rigorous instruction are distinct skill sets that should be targeted to improve classroom community. Revisions to the design of the instrument are suggested based on findings from the factor and IRT analyses. Additionally, while the VfSL shows sensitivity across various demographic groups, researchers and practitioners utilizing the VfSL should be cautious to ensure that any observed differences in classroom community across lines of race and gender are not a function of rater or item bias.

LEARNING, TEACHING, AND DIVERSITY Translingual Home to School Connections: Including Studentsâ Heritage Languages and Cultural Experiences in the Curriculum through Family eBooks Mary Ellen Miller Dissertation under the direction of Professor Deborah W. Rowe As emergent bilingual student populations continue to grow in the U.S., classrooms are more linguistically diverse, while many curricula remain English-dominant. Furthermore, researchers have called on educators to include studentsâ heritage languages, families, and cultural experiences in instruction, or create translingual home to school connections. Yet the processes by which teachers, particularly primarily English-speaking teachers, support studentsâ translanguaging and sharing in the classroom are not well understood. This qualitative study investigates ways that a primarily English-speaking teacher, a researcher, and emergent bilingual students shared about their heritage languages, families, and cultural experiences during home and classroom eBook composing and presenting activities with touchscreen tablets and digital cameras. Data were collected October through May using ethnographic techniques of participant/observation and interviews in one multilingual second grade classroom in an urban, English-dominant, public school. Adults invited children to use tablets in the classroom writing center to take photos, draw pictures, record oral narrations, and write/type text for translingual eBooks. Five digital cameras and two tablets were sent home with participants on a rotating weekly basis so that families could compose eBooks and take photos at home. Family eBooks and photos were included in classroom instruction, and findings indicate that students combined multiple modes and languages to represent their families, languages, and experiences in eBooks. Even when participants spoke different heritage languages, they taught each other their languages for translingual eBooks. Features of a translingual instructional context include collaborative composing, opportunities to present eBooks, and embodied practices where students and adults are positioned as both teachers and learners. Implications for researchers and educators working with emergent bilingual students and their families in English-dominant schools are described, including practices for creating translingual home to school connections. Future research is needed to further examine familiesâ use of digital tools to create translingual instructional materials, familiesâ perspectives on translanguaging pedagogies, and ways to implement translingual instruction beyond the classroom level.