A few weeks ago, I participated in a workshop with the International Bateson Institute that offered more than a conceptual framework; it invited a shift in how we perceive data itself, through a deeply humanising lens. Rather than viewing data as a static collection of numbers, facts, or isolated data points, warm data encourages us to consider the relationships and contexts that give meaning to information. Warm data foregrounds relationships, context, and the living complexity of human systems.
In contrast to cold data, which isolates variables and seeks certainty through measurement, warm data exists in the interconnections between things. It is qualitative, contextual, and inherently relational. Most importantly, it is deeply human, making it especially significant in understanding the complexity of the learning journey.
The Human Context
At its core, warm data resists reduction. A statistic about school performance, for example, may tell us how students score on standardised tests, but it cannot capture the emotional climate of the classroom, the cultural narratives shaping student identity, or the subtle dynamics between teacher and learner. These are part of the system itself, yet are never considered when deciding student abilities.
The human element of warm data lies precisely in these entanglements. It asks us to pay attention not only to what is happening, but to how meaning is made across contexts. A conversation, an experience, a reflection, each carries layers of significance as they help in making meaning of the world.
Warm data is not something we “collect” in the traditional sense. It is something we participate in. It requires presence, listening, and an openness to ambiguity. In this way, it challenges dominant paradigms of knowledge that privilege objectivity and control, and instead invites a more ecological understanding of knowing.
Education as a Site of Warm Data
I believe authentic learning has always been a site of warm data, even before the language of warm data emerged. For example, some educational models were already engaging with its principles. Traditionally, a few examples can be found in Buddhism, Taoism, African oral tradition, and Indian scriptures, where learning is a collection of lived experiences. Today, the International Baccalaureate (IB) is one such example. Across its programmes, the IB has consistently emphasised holistic learning, intercultural understanding, and critical reflection, dimensions that align closely with the ethos of warm data.
Rather than treating knowledge as discrete and compartmentalised, IB frameworks encourage students to explore connections between disciplines, contexts, and perspectives and continously reflect on their learning. It also allows students to continously reflect on their progress. This is particularly evident in the core components of its programmes, where students are asked not just to learn, but to synthesise, reflect, and situate their learning within broader human questions.
Assessing the Unquantifiable
One of the most striking aspects of the IB approach is its willingness to assess forms of learning that resist easy measurement. In doing so, it has, perhaps unintentionally, been assessing warm data all along.
Take Theory of Knowledge (TOK), for instance. Here, students are invited to question the nature of knowledge itself: How do we know what we know? What counts as evidence? How do cultural and personal perspectives shape understanding? These are not questions with fixed answers. They require students to navigate ambiguity, consider multiple viewpoints, and reflect on their own assumptions, in other words, to engage with warm data. And most importantly, humanise the learning process by sharing, collecting and exploring complex relationships and systems.
Similarly, the Extended Essay asks students to undertake independent research, often at the intersection of disciplines. While the final product may resemble a traditional academic paper, the process involves a series of relational judgments: choosing a topic that matters, interpreting sources within context, and reflecting on the limitations of one’s inquiry.
Then there is Creativity Activity Service (CAS) and Service as Action programmes, perhaps the most explicitly “warm” element of the IB core. They require students to engage in real-world experiences, creative projects, physical activities, and community engagement, and to reflect on these experiences over time. The emphasis is not on outcomes alone, but on growth, relationships, and ethical engagement. Assessment here is narrative, reflective, personal, real and deeply contextual.
Similarly, in the Primary Years Programme (PYP) and Middle Years Programme (MYP), students are encouraged to make connections across subjects and to consider the global and local implications of their learning with the PYP Exhibition and MYP personal project. The focus is less on mastering isolated content and more on understanding systems, social, environmental, and cultural, in their full complexity. Experiencing the real world by collecting warm data.
What the IB demonstrates is that it is possible to take the human element seriously in education, not as an add-on, but as a central concern. Its assessment practices, while not without challenges, reflect an understanding that meaningful learning cannot be fully captured through standardised metrics alone. There has to be a balance of both warm and cold data.
In this sense, the IB can be seen as an early practitioner of warm data thinking. It recognises that education is not just about transferring knowledge, but about cultivating the capacity to live and think in a complex, interconnected world.
Towards a Relational Future
The growing interest in warm data signals a broader cultural shift. As we confront global challenges that are deeply interconnected, climate change, social inequality, and cultural fragmentation, the limitations of reductionist thinking become increasingly apparent.
What is needed is not more data, but different data. Data that honours context. Data that includes the observer. Data that reflects the living systems we are part of. Data that is live, human and fluid.
This is where the human element becomes relevant and essential. Warm data invites us to rehumanize our ways of knowing, to see learning not just as parts, but as the relationships that make the whole.
And perhaps, as the IB has quietly shown for decades, this is not a new idea, but one whose time has finally come.