Journal of Research in Science, Mathematics and Technology Education

Measured Without Meaning: Data Subject Consciousness in Technology-Mediated STEM Learning Environments

Joshua Jonas 1 *
1 Baylor University* Corresponding Author
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Journal of Research in Science, Mathematics and Technology Education, Volume 9, Issue SI, June 2026, pp. 95-110
OPEN ACCESS VIEWS: 20 DOWNLOADS: 21 Publication date: 15 Jun 2026
ABSTRACT
Across STEM education, healthcare, and workplace settings, individuals increasingly learn and perform within data-rich environments where measurement systems generate information about their bodies and behaviors that they cannot access or interpret. This study introduces data subject consciousness, the epistemological condition of knowing oneself as a data source while being structurally excluded from interpreting that data, through phenomenological analysis of a paradigmatic case: an elite athlete navigating sports science technology. Through a 60-minute narrative interview with a Brazilian Olympic sprinter (400m) now pursuing doctoral training in Exercise Physiology, and following Moustakas’s (1994) phenomenological methodology, five themes illuminate how learners experience the gap between being measured and making meaning: data opacity, the displacement of embodied knowing by objective measurement, the knowledge mediator, the paradox of wearable technology, and resource constraints limiting interpretive access. The study argues that sport provides an analytically clear case for understanding a broader epistemic condition increasingly visible in STEM learning environments, including science classrooms, learning analytics systems, and AI-mediated instruction, where learners and teachers face structurally similar exclusions. Data subject consciousness offers a diagnostic framework for researchers and designers of educational technology who seek to build systems that support rather than foreclose interpretive participation by learners.
KEYWORDS
data literacy, data subject consciousness, epistemic access, epistemic injustice, learning analytics, STEM education, technology-mediated learning
CITATION (APA)
Jonas, J. (2026). Measured Without Meaning: Data Subject Consciousness in Technology-Mediated STEM Learning Environments. Journal of Research in Science, Mathematics and Technology Education, 9(SI), 95-110. https://doi.org/10.31756/jrsmte.514SI
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