Data Delights: Experiencing NCERT's new Data Literacy Curriculum

School education quietly but powerfully shapes what we learn – and sometimes what we may not learn. Over the past two decades, the human world has changed dramatically, but school curricula has remained the same until recently. Today, being able to read and question claims, inferences, and visualisations built on data has become a fundamental skill, shaping how we form perceptions and make decisions in both personal and professional contexts.

In this talk, I will share an overview of how data literacy is being reimagined in the new NCERT textbooks developed under NEP 2020. I plan to walk through the progression of ideas and concepts related to data literacy from the early grades up to Grade 12, highlighting not just the knowledge outcomes but also the skills, dispositions, and critical attitudes we hope to nurture in learners.

The session will also offer a glimpse into the pedagogical design: how tasks, examples, and questions invite students to interpret, critique, and create with data rather than merely compute with it. I will close with some key learnings and reflections from the textbook development journey. If you're curious, craving some intellectual fun, or eager to swap ideas and feedback, come join the talk!

(I hope to have a couple of tactile data visualisations in the common area made by participants contributing their data. These would be examples picked up from the textbook!).